About Rights and Wrongs
by shipperofinsanity
Summary: [Season5-Roommates!Blaintana 'verse; includes Klaine, Brittana, Bram, Barole (duh) and small amounts of Finchel and Kadam. Possibly triggering (mentions of past cutting, self-hatred, and gore), read with caution.] Blaine is living with Santana and their NYC apartment is twice as exciting - and it feels twice as small - as he'd hoped for, just like the world outside their windows.
1. Part 1

It had been a really, _really_ difficult week.

Blaine moving to New York was saving Santana's financial ass and he knew it. He didn't tell her that, of course - it was one of their unspoken agreements. Blaine wasn't sure when he and Santana had become friends close enough to think stomaching each other for months in a tiny apartment in a huge but crowded city was even a remotely tolerable idea but it had happened somehow and here he was; sitting amidst the last of his boxes, in his "room", having just made it home from classes at NYADA on his first day, exhausted and worn out and lonely and homesick and hurt and in pain.

But Blaine was a pleasant person. Earnest, kind, generous, thoughtful, even if he could sometimes be reckless and make horrible choices. He was a decent human being. And despite what others might say, so was Santana. She just happened to be a different kind of decent. She was honest, not earnest, and loving, not kind; accepting instead of generous and insightful, not thoughtful - and she could be abrasive instead of reckless and think too much to make any choice at all instead of making horrible ones.

Unfortunately, that day, she was also feeling a bit tired and stressed, just like Blaine was. And unlike Blaine, Santana wasn't the kind of person to keep quiet about it.

She stomped into the apartment after her shift that day to find that Blaine was putting away his boxes in his dresser. "Still unpacking?" she grumped at him.

"Mm," he replied, his back still turned to her, placing a picture into his bottom drawer and immediately covering it up with clothes.

"Hummel did that, too," she remarked, walking up behind him and slinging her bag onto the floor beside her, off her shoulder. "Put a picture of you face-down under clothes in his bottom drawer."

"How do you know it's of Kurt?"

"Who else's face would you love so much you'd have to hide from because it hurt to look at knowing they won't look at you the same way?" Santana snorted.

Blaine froze. She didn't notice.

"In fact," she continued, shifting her weight to one leg and crossing her arms, "I'm pretty sure that next to that picture he had this weird little red box. I tossed it aside when I was looking through his things, but I saw him pull it out once when I was visiting, and there was this old weird ring in it."

"He kept it?"

Again, she didn't notice. "But then, what's it matter?" she griped. "I'm pretty sure I saw him throw it out after he and Adam became official -"

Blaine's head dropped to his shaking hands.

"Oh, for Pete's sake, Kitten Boy, lighten up. It's just a project he did once, knowing Hummel. No big deal."

"Tell me, did you put a picture of Brittany face-down in your bottom drawer?" Blaine snarled, whirling around, and suddenly his face was red and set like wood and she actually felt the need to step back to get out of his line of sight because his glare was like ice despite the fire in his eyes. "Or did you make a shrine to her? Do you pray to her at night?"

"When did you get a backbone?" she snapped. "What happened to the little cupcake who went around wearing bowties and using too much hair gel and singing show tunes?"

"He moved in with a bitch," Blaine answered. "And don't act offended, because you've said it yourself a thousand times and I know you don't care, you're just looking for reasons to fight."

"Now that you brought Brittany into it, I am." She narrowed her eyes and bent down - she was still standing above him and he was still shorter, no matter how big he acted.

"But you know, I could understand a shrine and praying to her, or even hiding pictures," Blaine continued with his previous insults. "I get that. But making eye contact with some random stranger in a cafe and then you're running up to Ohio to break up with her? I -"

"His profile picture was a lighthouse."

"Shut up."

"He friended you on facebook and sent you two messages before you decided to give up on Kurt. And then you went running up here to tell him -"

"I didn't pretend to have a fake relationship just to get him to break up with his new boyfriend!" Blaine actually took a step toward her and she stepped back without thinking about. "You paid some chick that went to a college you dropped out of to pretend to be your girlfriend and then kissed Brittany and then _left_?"

Santana ought to have guessed that getting drunk around someone with a tendency to remember everything even slightly important was a bad idea, but it had been graduation night, and everything had come out then, for both of them and everyone else - though mostly them, because they were talking about roommate plans when this particular conversation happened. As a result, they knew more about each others' relationship problems than the others in their relationships did.

"Oh, but you hooked up with Hummel," Santana took a step forward herself, so she was nose-and-nose with him, though she had to bend down a bit more. "You made out with him in a Prius and then hooked up with him and then he left."

"Stop."

"You started it!" Santana raised the volume and acidity of her voice. "And that's the difference, isn't it? That he left? Because I left Brittany, but I never cast her aside or promised her we were just friends. Best friends, yes, but just friends? Never. And Hummel threw you out like yesterday's garbage once he slept with you."

"No, he didn't!"

"Oh, so he took you to see some musicals and out to dinner with Tina the day after, after declaring quite obviously that it didn't mean anything, and didn't get tired of you. Yeah. Sure, he didn't."

"At least I don't blame him for that!" Blaine exploded. "At least I understand him, I get it! Maybe I'm doomed to spend forever waiting for him or maybe he'll get out of denial soon, it doesn't matter - at least I don't go around making him feel bad for getting his life under control and happy!"

"What the _hell_ do you mean by that?"

"Brittany - is - dating - Sam," Blaine growled. "And you can't stand it and you know how much it hurts Brittany for you to act on that but you do it anyway. You make her feel guilty for Sam's unhappiness and discomfort because she can't stop hanging on to you because you're pulling her along like a thread. Britt's a good person, Santana, and so is Sam, and you're just making both of them miserable."

"At least they're not making _me_ miserable!" Santana felt like screaming and nearly did, managing to withhold it into a shout. Blaine flinched at the sudden change in volume and tempo, but regained his composure quickly. "Flaunting their relationship all the time, almost never talking to me because they can no longer end a conversation? No, that's all Hummel, Mr. I'm-Never-Saying-Goodbye-To-You and I-Can't-Say-I-Love-You-Because-I'm-Dating-Someone. And don't pretend he's not doing it on purpose!"

"He's not! He wouldn't!"

"Oh, yes, he would. He's stringing you along, just like -"

"But it doesn't even matter what you said because - b-because they _are_ making you miserable!" His eyes flashed in a way she had never seen before and she almost thought they were starting to tear up. "Brittany is making you utterly desolate, Santana, don't deny it! Every single second you're not with her you feel lost and hopeless and you put on the same old mask you've always worn, but it's cracked and chipping away over time and you're near your breaking point, I can see it. Just one more announcement of news from them and you'll shatter."

Santana pulled her foot back, insanely glad in that brief, adrenaline-filled moment that she'd put on her combat boots that day, and swung it, hard, into Blaine's shin, never breaking eye contact.

Blaine cried out and stumbled back onto his bed so he sat without meaning to. For the briefest fraction of a second, Santana thought the guilt of hurting him might not hit, but then there it was, poudning away at her, raising her heart rate like the fight had failed to, and she relied more on the very mask he taunted to make sure he couldn't see. "GOD DAMN IT, LOPEZ," he bellowed, clutching his shin with both hands, and though he was obviously livid she had never seen a faced that screamed 'Why did you do that?' so clearly.

"You looked like a kicked puppy," she scoffed, secretly curling her toes back in her boot as they throbbed.

"I look like a kicked _person_," Blaine hissed.

"You deserved to be kicked," Santana said, shrugging. _No, you didn't. I shouldn't have kicked you, I'm sorry. I'll get ice._

"OF COURSE I DID!" And Blaine was suddenly crying, the muscles in his face pushing and pulling, all working against each other, and the red seemed to shrink away to frame his eyes and settle in his nose and splotch about randomly, and the tears she'd seen filling those fury-filled eyes, the color of sunlight through a dusty window filtering a glass of whiskey, were overflowing. "I ALWAYS DO! YOU - DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA?!"

"What?"

"But you - you - do you honestly think that I deserve to be injured and you don't?" He seemed too tired to shout now and as if from nowhere the exhaustion felt set in her bones, too. "Hell, from all you've said and done, you deserve a lot worse than I'll ever do to you." He began rocking back and forth, and Santana was acutely aware of just how drawn he looked, how large the circles under his eyes were when coated with saltwater, how haggard his features had become. "But that's what matters, is that I'll never do it to you. I thought - I thought I at least deserved _that_."_  
_

"I -" Santana was at a loss. It didn't happen very often and when it did she hated it - but at the moment, despite her utter loathing for her own vulnerable state, she found that she hated Blaine's even more. Standing there with her arms crossed and her toes curled and her weight on her right leg and her entire head beating and her heart pummeling her ribcage, the apartment now very, very quiet and very, very thin, she felt herself trembling. She felt her mask cracking. Of course Blaine deserved better. She just wasn't the better person. She was violent and mean and bitchy and crass and she started to cry too.

For a while, it was just the both of them, crying without looking at each other, in the middle of Blaine's room, a foot or two apart even if it felt like worlds, and then Santana blubbered that she was sorry and Blaine blubbered back, "Then why did you do it?"

"Because I'm mean and I make people mad and I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry I yelled at you about Brittany."

"I'm sorry I yelled at you about Kurt."

"I'm sorry our first fight as Roommates couldn't have waited until we were both happier people."

"I want to be a happier person."

"Me, too."

"Can you hug me?"

"Can I hit you first?"

Despite the words, the way he'd said them so tender that she almost felt violated. "M-hm. Really hard. Just slap me." That wasn't helping.

But what did help was when Blaine jumped up from the bed, cursing as he did so, and hobbled toward her, limping, biting back words obviously, and came to stop just in front of her. She giggled at the sight, because it was funny, but then realized she was giggling and cried harder, and waited for him to hit her.

But he didn't hit her. He sighed and skipped it and hugged her like she'd asked him too, asked him to in a moment of total weakness and regret and god if he ever spoke of this again she would murder the kid, but right now she really needed him to hug her. And he did. He was warm and comforting and even though he was small his presence seemed to take up the whole room and just exist in a way that was comforting, and he whispered small reassurances to her, apologies and promises and encouragements that she hadn't heard from anyone in way too long. The last one she'd heard last from only her mother during their phone call the week before: "I love you, San." The nickname, however, was new, and even though a long time ago she'd promised herself she hated nicknames like it, it sent a relieving shot through her.

"Love you t-too, B."

* * *

"Blaine, try to relax a little and calm down," Kurt said gently into his phone. The Starbucks he sat in, though it was no Lima Bean, had given him his order promptly, and he had plenty of time to spare before Adam was due to show up. He was early and he knew it, but he had to get away from Rachel - she was in the middle of one of her moods where she was so far gone she was talking to herself out loud (shouting obscenities included). He knew it wasn't being a good friend to walk out when she was having a panic attack, but she was Rachel - she'd probably just call Finn and have him do the deed whether or not Kurt was present. That, and he had a date in twenty minutes. The Starbucks was still shuffling about with end-of-the-night business, but nobody noticed him sitting quietly in a corner, comforting his crying ex-boyfriend over the phone as he counted the raindrops hitting the window.

"I'm still not sure what even happened -"

"Deep breath in," Kurt advised. "You can try to sort it out after you've calmed down enough to revert back to your normal thought processing speed."

"After I _what_?"

Though Kurt knew he shouldn't have been, he was close to laughter at the tone in which Blaine said those words. "After you revert back to your normal thought processing speed," he repeated. "You know, the speed at which you process thoughts? How fast you can comprehend instead of just retain? Because I'm pretty sure that's the problem here, you do know what happened but you can't make sense of it, right? It means your thought processing speed is off, and that's most likely due to the fact that you're somewhat hysterical."

"I'm not hysterical," Blaine snorted, and Kurt could hear the difference. His rambling explanation had soothed and/or bored Blaine to the point of being calm enough to not just reply, but retort, and Kurt smiled at his small success.

"So tell me what happened," Kurt prompted, only slightly changing the subject.

"Um - Santana came home."

"Sounds bad already."

Blaine giggled at that and a little bubble of warmth jumped to Kurt's throat, threatening to make him do the same, simply because hearing Blaine laugh when he'd just been crying - albeit not very hard, but still - was so very relieving he felt personally triumphant. "Oh, shut up," Blaine chortled. "We love her." No matter how watery the laugh was, it was still a laugh, and Kurt was still happy to hear it.

"I take it you feel better already," Kurt observed, his eyes stuck on the raindrops as they moved and slid and skirted around and through each other on the slicked glass.

"Who are you talking to?"

Damn.

Kurt jerked his eyes away from the window and stared at Adam. Bringing the phone a bit away from his face, but only enough so Blaine's answering "Yeah, I am. It's really nice to hear your voice, it helps." wasn't pointed directly at him anymore - but it was pointed outwards, and Adam heard it.

His face fell and Kurt felt guilty. "Um, Blaine, it's Blaine," Kurt told him, covering the mouthpiece on the phone so Blaine wouldn't hear.

"Why?"

"Kurt?" Though the sound was quiet and cracked by the technology, they both flinched when Blaine's voice came through again.

"One second," he told Adam, holding up a finger, and brought the phone back to his ear, gesturing for Adam to sit. "Hey, Blaine, I'm sorry but I have to go. Talk to you later."

"Kurt? Was it what I said? I'm sor-"

Kurt hung up and put his phone face-down on the table. "Sorry about that," he said, smiling up at Adam, whose face was still set and locked and disappointed, and who was still standing, just looking at him. "What? Oh." He was upset about the phone call. "Blaine was upset, he and Santana had a fight - I think, he didn't really explain - and he called me to calm down."

"Yes, I heard that," Adam deadpanned, "I heard that he called you to calm down. And it was good to hear your voice and it helped. That's what he said."

"Well, yeah." Kurt didn't get it - why was he upset about this. Granted, he was very collected about it all, but it was pretty clear he was upset. "That's what we do. That's what best friends do, right? Call each other to calm down when they can't go over."

"That's what you two do, yes," Adam answered, "But why couldn't you go to him?"

Kurt looked at him, incredulous. "Um, our date?"

"You don't seem to see anything wrong with blowing me off to spend time with him normally, what's different this time?"

"Okay, what are you talking about?" Kurt demanded, beginning to become upset himself. "So I missed a couple of Skype calls because I was talking with him about moving to New York. Adam, he's my friend, that's what friends do."

"Friends don't typically end conversations with 'I love you'."

"Yes, they do," Kurt said, raising his eyebrows and dropping the register of his voice, making it obvious that Adam was approaching territory he shouldn't. "It's how I end conversations with Rachel, and Mercedes, and Finn -"

"No, you end conversations with them with 'goodbye', which comes after saying you love them," Adam pointed out. "You never say goodbye to Blaine."

"Oh, that," Kurt waved it off. "It's just a promise I made a long time ago I'm probably taking too seriously now, no big deal."

"Promises are always a big deal," Adam said, his tone downright angry now, though it was a soft kind of anger. "That's why they hurt so much when they're broken, no matter how small they are. And your promises to Blaine are never small."

"What's going on?" Kurt snapped at him, growing increasingly fed up. "So I was comforting a friend before you were due to show up to our date. What's wrong with that?"

"What's wrong with it is that you're in denial, Kurt," Adam said, shaking his head and accidentally flinging small raindrops around him in a halo. "Are you still in love with him?"

"I -" Adam had never outright asked him that before. Well, once, back in March, after the big snowstorm, he had, but then he'd accepted silence as an answer before moving on - now, he waited, with no small degree of impatience, for Kurt to answer him, not letting the silence slide. Kurt felt his face grow hot and his fingers start to twitch - what kind of question was that? They'd been dating for what, almost a year? Who asks that of their boyfriend? "No, I'm not."

"Liar," Adam said, but his anger broke and in its place just the previous disappointment reigned.

"Excuse me?!" Kurt trilled disbelievingly.

"I didn't ask if you'd forgiven him, Kurt, I asked if you were still in love with him," Adam specified. "They're two different things and one of them is true, I know. But which one?"

"What, forgiven him for cheating on me?" Kurt raised an eyebrow. "You know I haven't done that yet."

"So you must be in love with him," Adam concluded, almost sadly, leaning against the wall behind his chair rather than sit. Kurt felt the disadvantage of being in a lower position and felt meek; but he'd be damned before he showed it.

"No, I'm not," he argued. "I love him, yes, but I'm not in love with him. I love him like a love Rachel, except he's not quite so selfish."

"And what about me?"

"What about you what?"

"Do you love me, or are you in love with me? Because you haven't said either the whole time we've been dating."

"I - I - I d-don't think I'm - I mean, I -"

"But if Blaine asked, you'd be able to at least say you love him, right?" Adam's eyes were squinted, almost accusatory. "You might explain to what lengths, but you could say you love him. And that's more than you can do for me."

"You know what a big step that is," Kurt hissed.

"You and Blaine said it when you'd been dating for three months!" Adam argued.

_He has a point._

_No he doesn't, shut up._

"We aren't Blaine and I," Kurt told him sourly.

"No, we're not," he agreed. "But we're not you and me, either. Kurt, you're a good person, and I really like you. Hell, I even love you." Kurt felt his entire body scream at him to run away as soon as possible but he kept himself firmly rooted to the spot. He's my boyfriend, it's entirely appropriate to say that. "But I'm not the person you call when you need to cry and I'm not the person who go to when you just want to have a fun night out. I'm not the first one you run to with good news - or, for that matter, bad news."

"What's your point?"

"My point is that this is obviously a rebound that you are taking way too far in an attempt to delude yourself that you don't need Blaine," Adam said, his voice low but sharp, almost so he was snipping at Kurt, in a tone Kurt hadn't heard him use before. Not only did it make him vastly uncomfortable, but a bit wary - or maybe it was his words and not his tone. "I saw the pillow you bought, the one shaped like half a torso, in the bottom of your closet. I saw you fish that red ring box out of the trash after you and Blaine had your little spat a couple weeks after we got snowed in in March and put it back in your drawer when you made up. I saw you put the picture of him back up when you learned he was coming to New York."

"Anything else you've seen that you think is proof of something that it's not proof of?" Kurt asked dryly. "In all fairness, I don't think I'm the deluded one here."

"You walk with him in between classes now," Adam insisted. "Not me. You talk to him about movies you've just seen, not me. You go over every detail of Vogue with him, not me. You're using me as a back-up plan in case he ever hurts you again and in the meantime you're doing yourself a lot more damage than he could at this point."

"_Get to the point_!"

"You're hurting me, too," Adam told him, somber, and serious, and the quickened pace of raindrops against the window seemed to keep time to the racing beat of Kurt's pulse. Was he scared? No, that wasn't it. Was he… what was it? Why was his heart racing? Nobody seemed to be paying attention to them, though he was sure Blaine was wondering what made him hang up so abruptly. What was - was he - hopeful? "And I don't want to stick around if you're going to discard me as soon as you realize what literally everyone else already has, me included."

"So you're breaking up with me?" It almost wasn't a question, but Kurt was an actor, and managed to make it hurt. And Kurt was hurt about this. He did like Adam. Adam was his boyfriend, a comfort, a supporter, someone he cared about and who cared about him, someone he'd never want to see get bodily injured. And yet he wasn't torn up. He felt like crying, because _Holy crap this is the first time someone's broken up with me_ but aside from that he was just… sad.

Adam contemplated it for a moment before saying, "I think we've been broken up for a while now, but yes. I am, officially, break up with you."

"You - I - just because I'm friends with my ex?" Kurt sputtered. "Because you're, what, you're… I don't know, jealous? I've never seen you as the jealous sort."

"I'm not jealous," Adam said, a bit more fire in his voice than before. "I'm just not blind."

"Don't."

"I just did."

"Please?"

"You know that the second I leave you're going to call Blaine back."

"Only because calling you seems like it's no longer an option."

"It's always an option. But you never picked it before, so why would you now?"

"I'm not in love with him," Kurt threw at him again hotly.

Adam smiled sadly. "But you're not in love with me, either, and it's a lot closer for him than for me."

"Don't," Kurt said again, and this time he let his act slip away, and his eyes grew warm and they stung at him, and the color drained from his face, and he looked as confused as he felt. "Please. I'm confused, I'll admit, but I can - I can reform -"

Adam looked absolutely devastated to see him so raw, but she shook his head. "Not for me," Adam whispered. "Don't change for me. Don't ever change for me. Do it for someone who makes you happy, not someone who distracts you from being unhappy."

"You do make me happy."

"Goodbye, Kurt." Adam waited for him to return the sentiment.

"I'm not saying it," he warned.

Adam waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Kurt could hardly murmur the words. "Goodbye, Adam."

Adam left. Kurt dialed Blaine's number and let his cheeks start to mirror the window, fraught with clear, reflective, tiny pools of water. And then he hung up before Blaine could answer and curled his fingers around his phone and fought the urge to crush it and just rush out into the rain and start walking, so nobody could tell if they were tears or just rain on his face.

* * *

Kurt didn't tell Rachel, or, for that matter, anyone else, about his breakup. Not at first. But that grew increasingly difficult as time went on - and mainly because of the nightmares.

One might imagine that his nightmares would be about Adam. But no, of course they weren't. His nightmares were, in all honesty, even more terrifying than the thought of his entire relationship with Adam, because they had no filter. Dating Adam had been the filter, a way of suppressing the fact that he didn't actually want Adam _there_, if that made any sense. (It didn't - but then, denial hardly ever does… _not_ that he was in denial.) His nightmares involved no Adam, no dead mother (which he preferred to pretend he didn't have nightmares about still), no slushies, no homophobic assholes at school, no getting shot by a stray bullet while watching drug deals go down in the park.

They involved a dream.

A very familiar dream. A daydream he'd had only once, a daydream that had done more to hurt than to heal. It was the daydream all over again, but it ended differently. He'd been torn out of the last one by Adam - another reason he was the filter - but he wasn't there to stop it anymore. He'd been a doorjamb, in a way: he was there to keep the door open and not let it close until Kurt kicked him loose, but he'd somehow disappeared, and the door was swinging shut again, trapping all the thoughts inside and not letting anything else in.

He was alone in his head with his horrible, fantastical, twisted unrealities, and it was terrifying.

A wedding song, a love song, their chosen song, and they were singing it. In his nightmare they were always singing it. And Blaine was always raw with emotion and Kurt was always taken aback because though it never surprised him that Blaine felt so strongly the fact that he'd let his guard down enough to show it was shocking. Blaine was a private and controlled person with brief flashes of fear that turned him violent or heartbreak that reduced him to a mess.

In these dreams he was the Blaine he'd only ever seen during sex, but it wasn't dirty at all - it was passionate, and loving, and difficult, and painful despite the pleasure, and he was wild and loose and free and whole and Kurt loved h- _it_.

But when that last line was to be delivered - "until my dying day" - something always happened. It was always different. Sometimes Rachel's morning scales became sirens as Blaine tripped and fell off the roof - sometimes him accidentally knocking a tissue box off his bedside table became a gunshot that made Blaine crumple - sometimes the blankets curled around his feet became ropes that, when he kicked them off, wrapped around Blaine and pulled him down and away. The sound always ended, then, too, and the color faded. He became mute and blind to all but the golden flecks dancing in Blaine's terrified eyes.

He should have expected it to happen. It was only natural that when dreaming of singing the end of Moulin Rouge with Blaine that the end of Moulin Rouge would continue uninterrupted. And the one night that he fell asleep instantly, about a week after the breakup, was the one night when the last line was finally uttered.

And then Blaine collapsed in his arms and coughed thickly but feebly, and something dark and red stained his lips when Kurt caught him, something Kurt felt the overwhelming urge to kiss away because _why is he bleeding Blaine stop bleeding it'll be okay stop bleeding._

And yet Blaine didn't stop bleeding. No matter what Kurt said, the color had begun fading from his vision, and the sound was getting lower and lower so he could scarcely hear himself call out. But what was different, even more terrifying, was that it didn't all disappear at once like it always did - it was slow and it was torturous and he could feel the life and heat draining from Blaine as he trembled and went weak in his arms.

Kurt sank to his knees and cradled him, crying out his name, shaking him, trying anything to get him to open the eyes that had closed. There was one thing that never happened, and that was that his eyes closed. Blaine's eyes never closed. They were always open wide, panicked, looking to Kurt for help. He'd thought it was horrible before, but this was ten times worse. The faintest hint of sound and color still remained, and the closer Kurt bent down towards him the more it came back.

And then Kurt kissed him and tasted the blood on his mouth and everything vanished altogether and he sat up straight in his bed, having bitten his tongue in his sleep so hard it had begun to bled, and saltwater trails decorated his cheeks.

He heard thudding and wondered why his throat felt raw and his heart was racing, though it felt like aftereffects of the shouting he'd done at Blaine. And then the lights flickered on and Rachel was standing in his room, panting and holding her bathrobe around her tightly. "Kurt?" she squeaked. "Why did you scream? Is that - are you bleeding? What happened?"

"Bad dream," Kurt tried to say, but then, when it came out "Ba tween" he reached over to the tissue box and grabbed a handful, stuffing it in front of his mouth and spitting into it, feeling the sticky, thick, red liquid leave, and yet more pool up. "Bid my dongue." _Bit my tongue_.

"You - oh, sweetie," Rachel crooned, moving into his room quickly, and sitting on his bed next to him. She stood up again as soon as she did and looked at his sheets before patting them curiously and raising her eyebrows. "And you've been sweating. At least, I hope that's sweat."

The fabric of his pajamas was plastered to his clammy skin. "Id's swead."

"No, don't talk," Rachel told him. "You might hurt your tongue some more. How did you manage to bite it so hard?" Kurt shrugged, and Rachel bent down, forcing his hands to lower themselves. "Let me see," she ordered, and Kurt reluctantly opened his mouth. Rachel sighed with relief. "That's not so bad," she said, offering the good news with a strained smile. "It just looks like it because it's your tongue and tongues bleed a lot. It's a small cut, I think. No big deal."

Kurt opened his mouth to reply but Rachel shook her head. "No talking for you," she said. "Give your tongue some R&R. Tell you what - go clean the cut up a bit with some water," she instructed. "I'll get some ice you can put on it to make the swelling go down. It'll be sore in a few days for a while, but most likely it'll be okay."

_Will it?_ He wasn't thinking about his tongue.

"Mm - Hello?"

"Hey, Blaine."

"Rachel?"

"Yup."

"Why are you calling me? Isn't it, like, the middle of the night?" Blaine rolled over in his bed, murmuring into the phone as quietly as possible so it didn't wake Santana if it hadn't already. The ringing had alerted him into consciousness so it might have done the same for his roommate. The late hour leeched into his bones and dragged him down and he collapsed against the bed, holding the phone just barely up to his face, his arm flopping lazily. "What happened?"

"How do you feel about a weekend sleepover?"

"I'd probably feel better about it when it's past Eight A.M."

"I meant starting now."

"It isn't technically the weekend yet," Blaine reminded her, looking at the clock on his wall, with two minutes to go until midnight. "Why are you asking?"

"Truth is, Kurt can't go back to sleep yet," Rachel said. "He apparently had a nightmare, but he bit his tongue, and we're trying to take care of it, but if he goes back -"

"Is he alright?"

"Well, that woke you up." Rachel sounded oddly smug. "Yes, he's alright, or he will be. But as I was saying, if he goes back to sleep he could hurt it again, and it's bad enough as is. He woke up screaming and spitting blood into a tissue, so -"

"I'll be over as soon as I can. Let me grab a bag -"

"Kurt still has a pair of your old pajamas you left with us back last October, Blaine. And the last time you and Santana stayed the night with us you left your spare hair gel here. And you can use Kurt's clothes during the day, if you want, but my point is you're covered."

"Right, okay, um - but I'll bring a book. His favorite one."

"Which one's his favorite?"

"Oh, it's - it's kind of obscure, and in a way I suppose it's morbid, but he always really loved _Walk Two Moons_."

"Isn't that the story about the girl who goes to find her mom but her mom died in a bus accident?"

"Yeah, that's the one." Blaine was already out of bed, patting the covers of his bed down as he made it hastily, searching for his shoes. "Kurt says he can identify with the girl's need to have her mother there and that the symbolism is great. He likes it when I read it to him."

"It's, what, a middle-school level book?" Rachel asked.

"So it doesn't have themes that are so adult it's kept out of reach of thirteen-year-olds," Blaine shrugged. "It's a good book. I prefer _Chasing Redbird_, which is by the same author, but Kurt always liked _Walk Two Moons_ better."

"We were going to watch a movie or two, but the thing is that I have a meeting with my professor this morning and I need rest, so if you could read to him -"

"I'll be there in ten minutes," Blaine assured her, fitting the shoe over his foot and starting on the other one. "I'll bring the book and we'll be quiet. You can get the sleep you need."

"Thank you, Blaine," Rachel awarded him heartily. "I really do love him, but -"

"I know, I get it, I really do," Blaine said. "By the way, what was his nightmare about?"

"He's not talking, Blaine, he's got an injured tongue, he couldn't tell me - and if he tried I wouldn't let him."

"Right, sorry." Blaine rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he left his room, heading for the door and the hooks beside it where he kept his keys. "I just woke up, cut me a little slack, please."

"Not judging you," Rachel chuckled. "See you soon, Blaine. Thanks for coming."

"No problem. I'll be there."

He had just hung up when a drowsy and irritated voice behind him asked, "Where?"

"Kurt and Rachel's," Blaine answered her automatically, swiveling to face her. "Kurt had a nightmare and bit his tongue and woke up spitting blood, so I'm going over to help him stay awake and calm him down."

"Is he okay?"

"Yeah, he'll be alright."

"That's not what I asked."

Even exhausted and groggy she was astute and blunt. "I don't know," Blaine told her. "I hope so."

"Do you think you can make him okay?"

"Yes."

"Do you think he'll let you?"

Somehow Blaine guessed they weren't on the same subject anymore. "If I give it enough time, I guess," he said.

Santana yawned then, huge and silent, her eyes scrunching closed and her nose wrinkling, and made it obvious that she was nowhere near done sleeping. And though Blaine wasn't entirely sure why, he took the long steps necessary to close the space between them and took her hand and squeezed it. What really settled the suspicion that she was drop-dead tired was that she squeezed back and leaned into him.

"Go back to bed, Santana," Blaine whispered. "I'll call you when I can."

"Don't get in a car accident," she warned, her words slurred, her eyes already fluttering closed.

"I won't," he promised her, and smiled gently before releasing her and pushing her softly in the direction of her room. He waited until she'd stumbled into it and he'd heard her bedsprings creak before he turned to leave, the whisper of her hand in his still tracing his fingers, and he felt warm in a way he hadn't expected Santana could make anyone feel. A sisterly kind of warm, maybe. A warm that you weren't always fond of and more often than not exploded into full-blown heat, but when it was soft and fuzzy like this, it was hard not to revel in it.

He grabbed his keys and stepped out the door, closing it with a nearly unheard click; he blinked in the bright light of the hallway before his eyes adjusted, and then he started walking. He'd fallen into bed that night still wearing his clothes (his first week at NYADA was over and though it hadn't been bad, first weeks of anything tend to take a lot out of anyone) and so he plodded along quickly, Kurt his only destination in mind.


	2. Part 2

Blaine didn't knock.

Kurt was fine with that in and of itself. Blaine tended not to knock when he walked inside their apartment - he had a key, after all, Kurt had never taken it away from him after that night in October. He'd been too distraught to remember to do it, and by the time he remembered he was well on the way to calling him up to mend things somewhat so there was no need. Blaine always made sure he opened the door while saying something to make himself known, so it was never a surprise and they could turn him away if they needed to. It was considerate and respectful while still being intimate - in other words, it was Blaine _exactly_, Blaine on the dot.

This time was no different. Rachel had him with his mouth opened wide on the couch, an ice cube on the clean rag in her hand so it didn't melt quite so fast as it would should she hold it with her own flesh, and was looking at the wound when the door creaked as it slid open and Blaine stuck his head in.

"I'm here," he said, and Kurt looked at Rachel with a glare. He'd known she'd called someone while he was in the bathroom cleaning out his mouth, and he didn't mind having Blaine over, but he hadn't expected it.

Rachel smiled gently, and somewhat sheepishly, before turning to Blaine. "Great," she said, waving him in. He stepped in all the way and slid the door closed behind him. It gave a tiny, almost unheard click that let them know it locked; Blaine paid no mind to it, striding across the room to kneel by Kurt. Kurt's glare vanished without him being conscious of the change when he saw the book Blaine held out to him.

"I was thinking I could read it to you," he said, and Kurt smiled, his mouth closing a bit, and Rachel was caught between her desire to sigh at his distraction and smile at his distraction. Kurt nodded then, and Rachel turned to Blaine once more.

"Thanks for coming," Rachel said, stifling a yawn when she leaned forward to kiss his ungelled head. She purposely avoided mentioning the lack of gel; she knew he hated going without it, even for sleep, and that he allowed very small amounts of contact that included it, though she didn't know why those things were. She was touched that he'd completely forgotten to gel before he left, or simply didn't care, in his haste to help Kurt. She'd had to remind him they had some before he'd recalled it to begin with when he'd been talking about coming over, and this was something that was, for whatever reason, important to Blaine.

But not as important as Kurt. Never that important. Nothing could be, not to him.

And so Rachel took her leave after catching Kurt's eye and drawing it to the curls with a yawned, "Goodnight, boys. I'll see you tomorrow, and Kurt, don't doze off. Okay?" When Kurt had nodded, she'd kissed his head too, and ruffled his hair affectionately - for someone who used so much product, he loved people messing with his hair, unlike Blaine. "Love you guys."

And then Rachel left the room after giving the ice cube back and tossing the rag aside, and Blaine grinned at Kurt, toothy and wide, his eyes crinkling and still too huge and sparkly to be anything but puppy-dog eyes. "Do you want me to read to you?" he asked. Kurt nodded again, and Blaine seemed to consider something for a minute. "Hold on," he said, and was up like a shot, rummaging through one of the drawers in the chest they hardly ever opened. "I organized this earlier," Blaine said, "before I moved in with Santana." And then, with a cry of triumph, he pulled out a small, personal whiteboard and a dry-erase marker. "Here we go!" he said, handing the two to Kurt and picking up the book again.

Kurt patted the cushion next to him and Blaine snickered once before plopping down beside him. Kurt shifted so he was pressed against Blaine and could read the words, too, even if he didn't really want to. Blaine automatically bent his head so it rested on Kurt's shoulder and Kurt, in turn, rested his head on top of Blaine's, secretly loving how a few curls would shake every time he exhaled.

And then Blaine started to read.

* * *

"So congratulations, we pulled an all-nighter!" Blaine said with as much enthusiasm as one could muster who had gotten maybe an hour of sleep. Blaine was a fast reader and could speak quickly, and so, when he shut the book at around four in the morning, it didn't surprise Kurt.

By that time, and for a while, Kurt had closed his eyes and just listened to Blaine's voice talking, speaking, acting out the words and reaching different parts of the book with different tones. He really was a fantastic actor; he acted out the entire book, and not in the way English teachers did, either, but as if he were narrating a movie for someone who was blind. It was perfect and descriptive and the words felt like gold when they rolled off his tongue into the air.

Kurt had let exactly one tear slip past his eyelids when they reached the end, and Blaine had just congratulated them on staying up all night, and Blaine froze. "Kurt?" he asked, his voice already a ton different again - his own, this time, personalized, and tender. "You alright?"

Kurt's hands moved without the rest of him moving, and they scrawled _sad book_ on the whiteboard.

"So you're not in too much pain?" Blaine inquired.

The ice cube had melted only minutes into the book, so Kurt's tongue had already begun to throb and stopped; _no, just tired_.

"I don't think you should sleep yet," Blaine told him softly. "You could have a nightmare again."

Kurt reacted without meaning to. He dropped the whiteboard and marker and snuggled his arms around Blaine, clutching him close, his eyes flying open for fear he wouldn't be able to see color, the nightmare's effects flying back at him in full force. "Hey," Blaine crooned, hugging him back just as tightly, especially when another tear dropped down onto his curls. "Hey, what is it? I'm right here, it's okay."

"Nightmare," Kurt said, and was pleased to find that he could speak properly again, even if it hurt a bit.

"Shh, you don't have to talk about it," Blaine said. "You probably shouldn't. Write it down if you need to tell me."

"Too much."

"Shh, you're alright. It's okay. It's just a nightmare."

It was a less blunt realization this time, less sharp than the one that this might be another nightmare, that was that this was real and Blaine was fine and he didn't need to be scared. He took a deep breath and batted back the rest of the tears stinging his eyes and just said, "Right. Sorry."

"Okay," Blaine chuckled, "As much as I love your voice, you shouldn't be using it right now."

With yet another deep breath, Kurt released him, and felt the cooler air of the apartment slam into his chest and nearly knock his breath away when Blaine's warmth was no longer pressed to him. Fighting back the feeling, he bent down and picked up the whiteboard. He started to write, and Blaine waited patiently for him to be done.

When he was, he held up the board:

_I had a dream that you died. It wasn't the first one I've had. We were singing Come What May and you died in my arms like Satine in Christian's._

Blaine blinked and then looked at Kurt, his face carefully put together to display comfort and not anything else that Kurt needed to see. "I'm okay," he reassured him. "I'm right here. I'm not dying."

Kurt swiped his hand across the board until it was clear, and wrote, _I know, but the dreams keep getting worse. You die differently each time._

Blaine read it, his face hardening a bit as much as his eyes softened. "When did it start?"

_Back in March._

"Really?" It was whispered and Kurt knew it was because he didn't trust his voice not to betray him.

_At first it was a daydream I had watching Moulin Rouge where we were the ones singing. That one ended well but too soon, and now the others end badly and slowly._

"You had a daydream of me while watching Moulin Rouge?"

_Yeah. Now it's nightmares that end in you dying._

"Kurt." Blaine's voice broke, even in the murmur. "I'm not dying. I'm not going anywhere."

_Promise?_

"Promise."

_It doesn't happen every night,_ Kurt went on. _Sometimes once a week, sometimes three times a night._

"That bad?"

_Worse since Adam dumped me._

"What?!"

* * *

When Rachel walked out of her room the next morning, Kurt was asleep on the couch under a blanket, and Blaine was making pancakes while staring bleary-eyed at the stove. He'd been crying, and recently, because his eyes were still shining. But - wait, no, he was still crying.

"Blaine?" she asked, increasing her speed until she stood ext to him. He looked up at her and smiled despite the tear dripping from the corner of his eye. "What's wrong?"

"Adam dumped Kurt."

"What?" Rachel reeled back. "Since when?"

"Last week," Blaine answered. Rachel was familiar with the tone; he was hurting and didn't expect anyone to care. He'd heard it in Kurt's voice enough. "And then his nightmares got worse. About me dying."

"That's what it was about?"

Blaine nodded and reached for the flipper to slide under the pancake and turn it over. "He's been having them since March, apparently. They got worse when Adam left."

"Why did Adam leave?"

"Me."

Blaine could have spit the word onto a puppy for how much hatred he filled into the word. "You?" Rachel repeated, incredulous.

"I chase everyone away from him, don't I?" Blaine shook his head. "Chandler, myself, Adam - no wonder he has dreams about me dying. I don't blame him for wanting me to."

"Blaine, if he _wanted_ you to die, they wouldn't be nightmares," Rachel pointed out.

"But that's just it!" Blaine exploded, turning to face her completely, and where she'd expected anger to be was desperation. "Don't you see what I've done to him? I've completely destroyed him! I make him care for me when he should hate me."

"He shouldn't hate you," Rachel defended, unsure of what to say. "And he doesn't."

"He needs to."

Rachel had seen a lot. She'd seen betrayal, and total heartache, and lies and their consequences; she'd seen truths that hurt too much and truths that hurt too little, and she'd seen people cry through laughter and laugh through tears. But never, in all nineteen years of her life, had she actually met anyone who expressed, through every movement, every breath, every thought - hell, just in the way he stood, he spoke, he _existed_ - that there was nothing about them to love. And yet in front of her stood the perfect example, and he'd gotten fifteen sentences into their conversation, which somehow was enough to tell her that _Blaine is not okay._

"I do."

Rachel lurched forward and flung her arms around his neck, and he stumbled back before catching her and spinning slightly from the force with which she attacked him. "Never!"

"I hurt him so badly he has dreams of me dying, Rachel," Blaine choked in her ear.

"You _loved_ him so _strongly_ he has _nightmares_ of you dying," she corrected vehemently.

"I broke his heart."

"And still managed to fix it."

"His subconscious is trying to tell him to get rid of me."

"And his heart is fighting it."

"God, I've messed up."

"Everyone messes up, Blaine. You're human. And you're a good one."

"No I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"I feel - I - never mind."

"Tell me."

"It's not -"

"- important?" Rachel pulled away enough so that her face was right in front of his, his uncharacteristically dark eyes downcast and glistening with a sheen of saltwater. "I don't care. It's important to me. Tell me. What do you feel?"

"Guilty." Blaine sucked in air like it didn't exist and his lungs were burning; it seemed to have no effect but to make him yet more desperate. "I feel guilty." It was said simplistically but with an undercurrent of nonnegotiable sorrow, of emotions too intertwined to navigate.

"Look at me," Rachel ordered, and when he did, she continued. "You are not to blame for Kurt's state. If he'd get out of the denial he's in and remained the same, then some blame could be attributed to you. Blaine, you're trying so _hard_," she begged him when he averted his eyes again.

"But _is he okay_?" Blaine demanded.

"He'll be alright," Rachel said.

"That's not what I asked." Quoting Santana inadvertently didn't help matters, but it gave him a sense of rightness; Santana was so certain in all her actions and beliefs that it was hard not to take a part of that, too. But his certainty was with his lack of self-worth as opposed to value, and though Rachel didn't know what brought on the clamp on his loathing, she could tell it was there.

"I don't know," she answered, wary now, hating her words and wishing she had the heart to lie to him about it. "I hope so."

_That's what I said earlier._

"But what about you?" Rachel pressed. "You're not okay, and -"

"Not everything is about me," Blaine sighed, the fight whisked away from him, and he pulled out of her arms and turned back to the stove.

"But some things are," she insisted, "_This_ is."

But he wouldn't turn to look at her again, and he wouldn't speak, and she had a meeting to catch.

Kurt, on the couch, his tongue sore and still a bit swollen, covered by a thick blanket, the couch cushions holding him warmly, was crying again, but this time he wasn't asleep - and was all too aware of the need to scream.

* * *

"Kurt?"

Kurt looked up from the couch. He almost stayed silent before he remembered that he could talk again, so long as he didn't do it too quickly or with too much force. "Santana?"

"Hey, you're talking," she noted, but she did so in a whisper as she moved into the room. "Is he sleeping?"

"Blaine?" he asked to clarify, and when she nodded, he said, "Yeah. He stayed up all night. He said he didn't need to sleep but passed out while I took a shower." He looked at her. "Why are you here? Don't you have your shift soon? It's nearly noon." She had opened the door as silently as possible and was tiptoeing until she reached him, some sort of journal tucked under her arm. "And what's that?"

"This," she said, holding out the book for him to take when she stood in front of him, "is a journal I found while snooping in Anderson's stuff."

"Santana -" he said, moving to hand it back.

"No, no," she said, pushing it toward him again, her face serious. "You need to read it. I - I almost wish I hadn't."

"What is it?" he asked, opening to the first page. At the top there was a date, and under that a line that separated the page into two columns. One side was labelled "right" and the other "wrong". There were scribbles under each, and at the bottom there was a circled number of how many total there were. "Is this - lists? Of what he did right and wrong?"

Santana nodded. "And your name is all over the place, especially towards the back."

"When was the last time he updated it?"

"About last week. Said he made you hang up because he got too intimate in a phone call. At least, that was the last thing in the column. He adds up the total number of good and bad things at the end of every day's list, including the ones from earlier lists."

"What's the -"

"No more questions," Santana said. "Read it all before you let him know you have it, I have to get to work."

"Santana -!" he called after her in a hushed shout, but she just waved and hurried out the door again, this time not bothering to be quiet. Kurt immediately looked back to the bedroom, just in case Blaine woke up - but there was nothing to indicate that he had, and after a moment, his breath released - he hadn't even noticed that it had caught in his throat - and his heart rate slowed, and he turned back to the page, and started to read.

* * *

When Blaine woke, it took a few moments of struggling back into consciousness to realize that he was, in fact, waking up, and then he swore loudly and sat up in bed so quickly his head went fuzzy again and his vision blurred.

"Blaine?" Kurt's voice wafted through the curtain. "Are you okay?"

"I'm sorry, sorry," Blaine called back, tossing the covers off of him and sliding out of the bed. "I didn't mean to fall asleep, I swear. I'm sorry."

"Relax," Kurt ordered, sticking his head in. "It was difficult enough to get you under the covers when you were asleep without waking you up, I don't want you undermining my effort simply because you didn't intend to pass out."

"You did that?" he asked, gesturing to the now-rumpled comforter and sheets.

"Yup," Kurt said proudly. "Didn't wake you up at all, did I?"

Blaine chuckled at his triumphant grin. "No, not at all," he confirmed, and yawned, letting the grogginess of rousing oneself leave with the sound of Chewbacca he emitted.

"Have a nice nap?"

"How long was it?" Blaine countered.

"About four hours," Kurt answered, and pointed at the clock. Blaine turned, wary, to see that the time was, in fact, about half past noon.

"Crap," Blaine sighed, and reached up to run a hand through his hair. "Sorry, you must have been really bored."

"Not at all," Kurt said, holding up the book in his hands, his smile becoming a bit strained beneath the outward exterior of contentedness. "I was reading." _Walk Two Moons_ was between his palms.

"Twice in one day?" Blaine teased, and stretched, pulling at his muscles, standing on his tiptoes and bending his back, his shirt pulling up just enough to show his lower stomach before he settled back into a natural position. He raised his eyebrows a bit when he saw that Kurt's gaze was where his skin had just been showing, but said nothing, and pretended not to notice when Kurt flushed a faint red and looked back up to his eyes.

"It's a good book," he defended. "But you're right, twice in one day is too much. What do you want to do now?"

"That depends," Blaine responded.

"On?"

"On what you want to do."

"Oh." Kurt contemplated for a moment before he said, "I want to go out."

_He doesn't mean it like that, calm down._ "Go out where? A movie? A restaurant? Both?"

For some reason, Kurt looked mildly disappointed for the briefest of moments, but then perked back up again. "Sure, both. There's supposed to be that new movie with Emma Stone in it."

"But then there's still that one, what's the name…" Blaine pondered over it for a moment, and then snapped his fingers with a smile. "Oh, uh, was it _Andrew and Katie_?"

"I think that might be the Emma Stone one," Kurt said, with a smug little smirk.

"If we wait a week or so we can see _City of Bones_," Blaine suggested.

"Mm, but I don't want to wait," Kurt griped lightly. "What about the new _Percy Jackson_?"_  
_

"Oh, god, no," Blaine held up his hands in a surrendering signal, wrinkling his nose. "The books were great, but the movie adaption -"

"Yeah, I get it," Kurt laughed. "Um, _Disney's Planes_?"

"_Elysium_?"

"_We're The Millers_?"

"_The Spectacular Now_?"

"Best suggestion I've heard so far," Blaine said, somewhat resigned but by no means unhappy. "That stars Shailene Woodley, right?"

"Right," Kurt said. "It's supposed to be a high school love story with the not-so-typical-but-totally-typical 'nice girl' and stupid popular dude."

"Ugh!" Blaine exclaimed, tossing his hands up. "Nothing sounds good."

"Or…"

"Or?"

"Or we could rewatch _the Muppets_. We have it on DVD."

"And then what? Order Chinese?"

"Hm," Kurt considered. "I know this great Chinese place that you call ahead and order from, but then you have to go pick it up. Does that sound okay?"

"Will it make you happy?"

"Um, sure."

"Then yes, it sounds great."

* * *

"He still can't dance."

Kurt laughed outright behind the wheel of the car. When last he'd been in Ohio - at the end of the school year to see Blaine's NYADA audition - he'd driven his truck back up to New York rather than fly, and Blaine arrived by plane only three hours after he got home and crashed with them. It had taken a month for them all to decide that four people in that tiny apartment was too much, and living arrangements had been suggested. Santana suggested, at first, that Blaine and Kurt live together, but that was vetoed quickly by Rachel, who said she wanted Kurt, because he was her first roommate in NYC and her best friend. That left Santana with Blaine and likewise; though they'd been skeptical at first, they had eventually decided to go ahead with it. They'd found an apartment and, with the help of Blaine's almost-but-not-completely unresponsive family's wealth, they managed to snag it. Santana got a job at Callbacks as a bartender/waitress, which really surprised none of them, and Blaine was still given a monthly allowance injected into his bank account, so they got by.

But at that moment they very much did live together in that tiny little bubble of space and air and laughter, and Kurt smiled so widely his vision narrowed because his eyes were squinted with joy. "We've been over this," he said. "That's right, Jason Segel still can't dance, but if you surround a bad dancerswith enough good dancers that he's obcured, it's not so bad."

"One bad dancer in a group of good dancers makes every dancer look sloppy," Blaine declared.

"So Finn made the New Directions look sloppy?" Kurt contested.

"But he made them sound good," Blaine amended.

"And not a thought as to _moi_," Kurt sniffed. "I'm wounded. You wound me, Blaine."

"You make _everything_ sound good," Blaine rolled his eyes. "You could literally rattle off the contents of a salad and it would be enrapturing."

Kurt reminded himself, not for the first time since climbing into the car, that murdering the drivers in front of you was both illegal and unhelpful. He also reminded himself to pay attention to the drivers in front of him no matter how sweet Blaine got.

"Contents of a salad, huh?" Kurt looked at him out of the corner of his eye; he was beaming, his eyes twinkling, absorbing the city while still drinking in everything Kurt said. "Remind me to do that the next time we have salad. I will _enrapture_ you."

"You already en-"

Blaine never got to finish the sentence.

At that moment, the car in the lane beside them that had been going much too fast suddenly swerved. Kurt heard the screeching of brakes and a metal-crunching, shattering slam, and then the color drained and the sound disappeared - just like in his nightmares.

When Kurt was little and was sleeping at home the night his mother had died, he'd experienced the most intense terror he'd ever felt. It wasn't physical, or exterior to him in any way. He'd been incapable of sleep in the grasp of thoughts that were mostly What am I going to do without Mommy? I don't know how to do this without Mommy, but after a while the fear had become so great that it had dragged him under. He hadn't fallen asleep, he'd fainted - and he woke up about a minute later with more panic and less fear than before, which only served to keep him awake.

Feeling the life leak out of the world around him brought back that same level of terror, and he reached out for Blaine, and then he was gone.

* * *

He was awake again soon. The first thing he noticed was that he actually wasn't in any physical pain, despite the amount of terror and panic that had him incapacitated in his seat. The windshield was cracked, and a few large shards were missing from Blaine's side, where the car had hit. Blaine's window was entirely smashed, and his door was obviously dented inward, and the other car's rear-view mirror stuck through the window in a place that made it perfect for having hit Blaine in the head when he was jerked forward. And it was obvious something had hit Blaine in the head, because there was a trail of blood - or maybe two or three - dripping from a thick red cut just below his hairline on his temple. He was pale, and -

Wait.

_Wait._

_Oh. Oh, no. No, no, no no no no nonononononBlaineBlainenotBlaine-_

He was pale. Oh god, he was pale and bleeding. Blaine was pale and bleeding. And looking down made Kurt's stomach wrench sickeningly, even more so than it had done looking at Blaine's head wound, because there was one of the shards from the window impaled in his shoulder. His white polo shirt was decorated now with dots of crimson slipping off his chin and a dark, spreading stain of the color from around the glass.

Kurt was distantly aware that he was screaming but it was as if he were one of the dozens of screaming bystanders - not in the car, not in the situation, because he just didn't understand. Blaine. How had this happened to Blaine? The drunk's car had hit his at the perfect angle to stick their rear-view mirror through the window by shattering the glass, which also broke the windshield. That was all.

And then Kurt remembered that that seat belt had stopped being responsive, and had stopped locking when tugged on. Because Kurt was a remarkably safe driver, they'd figured that it didn't matter, and hadn't bothered paying to repair it. But no wonder Blaine had been yanked forward. Kurt had tried to brake, hoping that the truck was far enough to slide past them, but only subconsciously and on a limb; and he shouldn't have. Had he simply kept going the car would have only hit the back, and Blaine wouldn't be - wouldn't be…

He cried and he screamed and somehow he knew that there were people trying to get them out, but Kurt couldn't move - not because of injury but because of fear - and as soon as Blaine was out of his sight Kurt felt his limbs loosen and he scrambled and fought back fiercely to get to him.

But the arms holding him were strong and he doubled over, straining against them, and wailed. This isn't happening again.

Words were said but went unheard; things were seen but went unnoticed; and pain was felt but went ignored. And there were sirens, he supposed, and screaming, but there were hands on him that were too strong, too rough, hands on him that weren't Blaine's, and Kurt screamed and dropped to his knees, and then the hands were gone, and Kurt was back up like a shot, and ran around the wreckage to see Blaine.

On a stretcher. It must have been Blaine, who else would it be? The drunk was being held by the police up against his car, and those were Blaine's shoes he saw through the throng of EMTs.

And then he was grabbed again and it sent such a shock through him that he fainted again.

* * *

"Try to keep him upright. There's nothing wrong with him."

"But he was screaming, and it was bad. There must be something wrong."

"Probably some re-lived childhood trauma coupled with fear and guilt. You know how he went for this kid here, he obviously cares about him. He's just fainted. He'll be fine."

"And the other kid?"

"Nothing too serious. A nice deep cut in the shoulder, but stitches and rest should fix that. He'll most likely have a pretty bad concussion, but the cut isn't too bad, it was just the force of the blow that really affected him."

"So they'll both be okay?"

"Yes, sir. If you don't mind my asking, why are you helping so much?"

"They're human beings, ain't they? I just wanna make sure they're gonna keep being alive ones, is all."

"So you have no connection to them?"

"I've told you, no. I've got their wallets out of their pockets, like you said, and I can tell a lot from that, but that's all."

"You'll probably be forced to leave when we reach the hospital."

"Yeah, I know. So long as I help decent kids stay decent, I'm alright."

"I admire you, sir."

"And I admire you. This is your job, it's just my desire."

"My name is Anne. And yours?"

"Cooper. I've got the same name as that kid's brother, apparently, he's got a picture with their names underneath it in his wallet."

"Do you think they're brother? They look nothing alike."

"Brothers don't tend to keep romantic notes they write to each other and put pictures of them kissing in the front pocket of their wallets, right?"

"So they're boyfriends?"

"Be my guess."

"Ex-boyfriends." Kurt wasn't sure when he'd become awake enough to tell that someone was holding him up and that the vehicle he was in was noisy, cramped and moving, and that the nurse was talking to the strange man who was so helpful; but he felt the need to correct them. "But we're trying to fix that."

"Hey, you're awake!" cheered the man beside him. "Took you long enough. You alright?"

"That depends. Is he?"

Anne, the nurse, fixed him with a green-eyed glare, her dark curls spilling over in soft tresses singing free from the tight bun she had pinned on the back of her head. "He will be."

"That's not what I asked."

Anne cocked her head to the side and raised her eyebrows. "I can't answer what you asked, you might faint again."

"Am I allowed to hold his hand?"

Anne's face softened but grew sadder, too. "Not yet, kid. It'll be a while."

* * *

"Santana?"

"Kurt!"

Kurt answered his phone, the bright orange shock blanket discarded from his shoulders. Even though he wasn't in shock, they'd given it to him - but even if he were in shock, he'd hope he'd have enough sense not to wear _that_ hideous color. He was sitting in the hospital waiting room, having already been cleared, and Blaine was still behind those doors, along with news as to his well-being.

"Were you planning on telling us you were in an accident?!"

"Yes, actually, I was dialing Rachel's number when you called."

"Wait, so, if you're fine, does that mean Blaine -"

"No."

There was silence from Santana's side, silence filled with static, and then, "Oh my god. How was -"

"Come to the hospital. Quickly. I don't know anything and I - I n-"

"Right, we're coming."

Burt smiled at Carole as she tossed a piece of lettuce at him from her plate. Lunch with her in the garage may have been unorthodox, but he couldn't leave the shop during working hours, and they'd planned this out. Her salad sat in front of her and his burger in front of him and every now and then he;d offer her a bite and she would say she'd take it if he ate some salad. But Burt didn't want salad. "Beef in buns," he told her teasingly, deflecting the leaf, "that's the lunch of winners."

That's when his phone rang. Not the garage phone, and not the house phone, but his cell phone. He raised his eyebrows and held it up: Kurt.

"Ah!" Carole exclaimed, clapping. "Put him on, I miss him."

"Tell that to him," Burt suggested, and then added as an afterthought, "But not before me. I call dibs."

"You don't get dibs," she remarked scathingly, but with a loving smile, and Blaine smiled back before accepting the call and putting it on speaker.

"Hey, bud!" Burt greeted. "What's -"

"D-Daddy?"

Burt's face transformed, his smile disappearing and his eyes splitting wide, and he looked up at Carole, whose face now matched his. All the levity of the atmosphere before was gone and the air was thick and heavy. "Kurt, what happened?"

"Daddy, Blaine - I - I don't… he's…"

"Kurt, sweetheart, take a deep breath," Carole said soothingly. "We're right here. Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm - I'm fine." He obviously wasn't and Burt curled his empty hand into a fist at the tremor in Kurt's voice. "It's Blaine. We - there was a drunk driver and he - he hit us in the lane, and Blaine… got… _hurt_."


	3. Part 3

The last time his head had hurt like this, his father had hit him.

Not that he'd want anyone to mistake that his father hit him often. It was entirely possible that when he was a child his father might have spanked him more often than most parents would, but then, his father was a strong believer in a hands-on relationship and tough love, and that led to physical punishment. It was never abuse. Plausibly harsh, and reasonably called unnecessary - but not abusive.

His father would always explain to him beforehand why he would hit him, and afterwards he would kneel in front of him and ask if he'd ever do it again, and then apologize for hurting him, and would then send him on his way.

Except for once.

His parents were never all too religious, which was why, when he'd demanded they tell him why his being gay was wrong, their arguments were even weaker than that of a bible-bangin' dick. (Which was not to say that all bible-bangin' people are/were dicks, but most dicks, for some reason, tend to be bible-bangin'.)

But when Blaine had been pressured into telling them that he and Kurt broke up, his father had asked why. And Blaine had said that they both made some mistakes but he'd been really messed up about it and so he'd cheated.

And his father had called him a whore and punched him and sent him sprawling.

His mother had been horrified. Hell, his father had been horrified, too, but he'd been more torn about it - it wasn't like it was the first time he'd hit him, but it had been vastly different. And then his father had yelled at him about not being able to keep his hands to himself and to have self-respect and that being gay was wrong and he was disgusting and a whole lot of other things before storming out.

And then his mother had taken him aside and said that after graduation, they would pay him to act like he wasn't their family. That they'd increase his monthly allowance and put it right in his bank so long as he cut all ties. He was allowed to talk to Cooper, but he was being disowned, and being bribed to accept being disowned.

He'd started packing that night. By the time graduation rolled around, his mother handed him the wad of cash to start off the pay, and had sent him out. He'd gone straight to the airport and to Kurt's and that's where it had started and why he could pay the rent with no job - his only job was to pretend the people who should have loved him had nothing to do with them. Or rather to stop pretending they did have anything to do with them.

Nobody knew, not even Cooper. His parents told him he hadn't been in contact an Blaine told him the same, and though Cooper was unsettled, he didn't seem suspicious.

Blaine had never been more glad for his brother's self-loving nature, but at the same time he wished someone would care enough to _see_.

And so that's what he got. A hospital, a whole staff, and a wide range of friends, all ready to see now what he'd kept hidden for almost four months.

And he wasn't even awake to revel in it.

* * *

"I want to go, Carole."

"You know we don't have the money."

"Damn the money, he's -"

"Going to be fine," Carole cut across smoothly. "Remember, Kurt said that the nurse he overheard said Blaine would most likely just have a couple stitches and a concussion."

"He said he wasn't sure," Burt growled, pacing the garage floor. "He said he couldn't be certain because he was half out of it."

"Burt, Blaine will be fine, and if it turns out he isn't, I'll work double time to get the pay," Carole assured him, and he stopped and turned to her, ready to make her take it back and ready to tell her she shouldn't overwork; Carole held up a hand to stop him. "Before you say anything, you're not going to change my mind. But, until we're positive that he's not alright, _we can't go_."

"I want to see him."

"Me too. I love him too, Burt," Carole reminded him. "He's my family as much as yours."

"But this is how my family died before, Carole!" Burt shouted them, bringing his fist down on a worktable. "Did is how Elizabeth died! And I wasn't with her then, too! I can't just - leave him like I did last time. He was all alone last time. What if it happens again? It's all happening again."

Carole was silent after that.

* * *

There was no sign of a doctor.

Santana sat as still as a statue in her chair, her face stoic, her limbs stone. Rachel, on the other hand, fidgeted and twitched and whenever she spoke did so with a smile so fake Kurt had to remind himself after counting to ten that she was only trying to stay positive. And Kurt was too busy noticing and analyzing everything else to bother recognizing that he was trembling in his chair and snapping at everything that irritated him.

"Kurt, I'm sure he's fine."

"Didn't know you were psychic," Blaine it back at Rachel, who simply sighed like she had been before.

"The nurse said it would be okay -"

"I could have heard wrong. I don't know if you've noticed, Rachel, but I don't do well when frightened."

"I'm really trying to help, Kurt."

"Well, you're not helping. You're hurting. I'm hurting, hell we're all hurting so unless you can get us a group band-aid that can somehow mend every tiny detail of Blaine that's hurting us all and can simultaneously bind us to him until the adhesive wears off and it peels, shut up."

"You shut up, Kurt, you're the one being unpleasant. I'm trying to lighten the m-"

"Rachel," Santana said, her voice flat, betraying no emotion whatsoever. "Stop."

Rachel stopped.

* * *

[Sam] 8:32PM  
Any news?!

[Kurt] 8:33PM  
Nothing. Stop asking.

[Sam] 8:35PM  
I care about him as much as you do, Kurt, don't lash out at me just because I put my worry into the form of frenzied technological communication due to unfortunate circumstances as opposed to sitting uselessly in a hospital waiting room myself.

[Kurt] 8:36PM  
That sounds pretty intelligent for someone who got the lowest SAT score the school has ever seen.

[Kurt] 8:54PM  
I'm sorry, I really shouldn't have said that. I'm scared.

[Kurt] 9:00PM  
Sam?

[Kurt] 9:12PM  
Sam I'm really sorry, you know how I get when I'm like this.

[Kurt] 9:32PM  
We should have SOME news by now, right?

[Sam] 9:37PM  
So no news?

[Kurt] 9:38PM  
Yeah, no news. And I really am sorry.

[Sam] 9:40PM  
Just forget you ever said it.

* * *

[Mercedes] 9:41PM  
OKAY WHITE BOY, I SHOULD NOT HAVE HEARD ABOUT THIS FROM SAM, WHAT HAPPENED?!

[Kurt] 9:42PM  
It's a long story.

[Mercedes] 9:43PM  
Seems to me like you've got plenty of time.

* * *

[Quinn] 10:00PM  
Nothing yet?

[Rachel] 10:01PM  
Nothing. We've been here for hours. I'm really scared.

[Quinn] 10:02PM  
Do you need me to call you and calm you down?

[Rachel] 10:03PM  
Please.

* * *

[Mike] 10:25PM  
Anything?

[Puck] 10:26PM  
Nothing that anyone's heard.

* * *

[Tina] 10:41PM  
Nothing.

[Artie] 10:42PM  
Are you sure?

[Tina] 10:43PM  
I have never been so desperately unsure in my life, Artie, but there's no news.

* * *

And finally, finally, a white lab coat with a name tag that was filled with a body strode out carrying a clipboard and asked, "Family of Blaine Anderson?"

"None of his family are here," Kurt said immediately, leaping to his feet and nearly gliding towards him. "But I'm Kurt, I was in the car crash with him."

"Is he okay?" Rachel asked, following suit.

The doctor smiled then. Kurt was past looking at physical features and more the presence they carried at that point, and the doctor's presence became more warm and comforting than methodical as it had been. "He'll be alright."

"That's not what I asked."

Kurt wondered how many times each of them would say that. He'd heard Blaine say it earlier, and he had said it in a way that implied he'd heard it before - but the only person he could think of that could have told him that at all recently would be Santana, which meant he was the odd one out.

"He'd got a concussion and we had to take glass out of his shoulder," the doctor explained, "So at the moment, no, he's not really okay. But it should be a fast recovery," she continued, noting their faces, "and he will be alright. He should be out soon. And Mr. Kurt, what was your full name?"

"Kurt Hummel," Kurt supplied for her. "His brother's in California and freaking out and his parents aren't responding to any of my calls or messages, so we need to count as family."

"I'm not sure if I can -"

"If he doesn't come home tonight," said a voice they hadn't heard until then, one that was bitter and cutting and determined, one that belonged to Santana, "I will personally do everything I can to take down every single person who worked on him. His home is with _me_, with _us_. He is my family and I am his. I managed to get the entire current staff of a restaurant fired before, and while this might be slightly more difficult, I assure you I will not stop." And then Santana seemed to tower over her in her heels and her hair and with the flames in her eyes. "And I will succeed… _unless_ my friend comes back. I assure you I am more than capable of handling everything that needs to be done to get him back into perfect health. But I want him home, and I want him home _now_."

Kurt had been afraid of Santana plenty of times, but the entire waiting room, staff included, had fallen silent and let the chills raise goosebumps all over their skin, and the hair on the back of their neck stand up. Her threats were vague and yet specific and not a damn person who had heard her could ever possibly say she had lied; the truth was cold and the truth was hard, so the truth was a blade and in that moment, Santana was the best swordsman in the universe.

The nurse licked her lips. Despite the professionalism and training that had no doubt been drilled into her, her eyes flickered with fear the way Santana's did with fire. "I'll see that he gets checked out."

* * *

[Britt] 11:01PM  
tana pleaze stop ignoring me and tell me if your okay

[Santana] 11:02PM  
He's coming home. I'll be fine as soon as he's home.

* * *

Kurt was still standing. Rachel had taken his hand and he'd not reacted at all, let alone pulled away, so she was still trying to squeeze it comfortingly. The doctor had disappeared behind the door again, and Santana was sitting once more, her knee over top of her other knee, her body curved so it was made clear by her pose that she could destroy anyone in the room but was too far above them to try.

Kurt just waited for the door to swing open.

When it finally did, it was because the doctor was walking through again. But this time she held it open so someone could walk through, and Kurt's heart, which had been steadily increasing in tempo as to its beating, stopped altogether the moment he saw Blaine walk through.

His golden-flecked eyes looked around before they met his, and then they brightened, and he smiled, his lips straining to make up for the hours Kurt had spent with a frown. He was still a bit paler than was usual but he looked better, over all, with the exception of the stitches underneath his hairline and the obvious stiffness of his shoulder. Blaine looked between the three of them once before his eyes found themselves back on Kurt, and Kurt's heart starting racing again, the organ thumping so loudly and quickly Kurt was sure it was going three times the speed of that clock on the wall.

"There you are, Mr. Anderson," the doctor said, gesturing uneasily to the three of them. "Shall I have your roommate check you out?"

Santana pressed her lips into a hard line despite the amount of color that was flooding in to her previous ashen-struck face. Blaine nodded, but his eyes remained on the boy before him. "Sure," he answered, though it was fairly easy to deduce he had no idea what he'd answered.

The doctor nodded and without another word crossed the small distance with wariness and handed the clipboard to Santana, who yanked it out of her palms, signed it, and then placed it back in, smiling cockily when she met the nurse's eyes, though it was false. Nonetheless, the nurse scurried away after bidding Blaine farewell and giving him instructions nobody but Rachel really heard.

And then Kurt tore away from Rachel and launched himself at Blaine, only to stop right in front of him and change from the hug Blaine had steeled himself for to simply holding his hand out as if he were to touch his face. "Can I…"

Blaine laughed at him. "I'm not fragile, Kurt. It takes more than this to break me."

"So it won't hurt if I hug you?"

Blaine didn't answer and it was only later that Kurt figured out that it was because if he'd said no he would have been lying, but if he'd said yes he would have been lying, too. Instead, Blaine hugged him, wrapping his arms around his upper torso and tugging him close, and Kurt locked his arms around Blaine's neck and rested his chin on his shoulder.

It was warm. Kurt hadn't noticed how cold the room was until the living, breathing form of another, filled with aches and peace and blood rushing everywhere, was there to mix their heat, and he came off colder. They rocked there for a minute of silence before Santana interrupted them.

"Alright, Lady Hummel," she said, moving towards them, "I need to take Gel-Head home."

"Not until I get my hug!" Rachel squawked indignantly, and Kurt was force to pull away so Rachel could nearly tackle him. Blaine winced when the contact came and Kurt itched to tear her away, but then he smiled again easily and petted her head twice and told her thank you.

"You can stay with us tonight," Kurt suggested.

"He needs to come home." There was no arguing with her when she got like this; the rest of them exchanged looks.

"They can stay with us for the night, Santana?" Blaine asked, almost like a timid child. "I'll still be home."

So Santana moved forward until she was whispering in his ear. Neither Kurt nor Rachel heard it, but when Blaine nodded, Santana smiled. "Fine," she agreed. "If you two want to stay with us tonight, you can."

"Thank you thank you!" Rachel looked ready to take the place of the sun for how much she was glowing.

"Blaine," said Kurt, looking over at him again and reclaiming his attention in a second. "I'm so sor-"

"Don't you dare."

Blaine's eyes had narrowed and his smile had dropped; his tone held an order none of them could defy - and yet, despite the sobriety and seriousness with which he spoke, there was an element of discomfort lying beneath it, the facade of control brilliantly acted. Blaine was refusing to let him apologize.

Blaine was refusing to let him apologize, an in doing so, he was refusing to let Kurt keep blaming himself.

And in the next second, Blaine relaxed and flinched slightly, raising a hand tenderly to the cut on his head. "Sorry," he said, "Long day. Can we go home now?"

"Absolutely," Santana assured, and took his arm with no small amount of awareness as to his frailty. She took the time to kiss his cheek and pull him closer while they walked, and then she was wearing her business face again, leading him outside without so much as another word. Kurt and Rachel had nothing to do but share a somewhat confused and concerned look and follow them.

* * *

Santana was being cut in half my her simultaneous desires to both snuggle Anderson until he was blue and bit the living crap out of him.

It was odd for those two to occur at once. Santana was very in-touch with her mental faculties, and she was almost never caught off-guard in such a way as to compromise all aspects of the person she made sure everyone saw. It had happened only a few times before, and none were times she really wanted to think about. But this was new - she had never experienced her blood actually running cold as it had when she'd arrived at the hospital and Kurt was crying on the phone with his dad.

Seeing Kurt cry was horrible enough. Knowing that it was probably Blaine that was causing him to do it wreaked havoc all over her.

It had been a mess of emotion that Santana had never, ever wanted to experience. The absolute paralyzation that came with the idea that Blaine might not come home had been unceasing, locking her joints in place and keeping her entire mind, body and form all in line. Santana could not afford to get out of line. The one time she did, the one time when she had truly allowed herself to believe that nothing would be okay again, had been when her grandmother had disowned her. And she had come dangerously close to that today.

_Not even today_, she realized, _yesterday_. Sitting in the cab, staring outside the dark window, trying to remember what exactly she said to the nurse to get her way - whatever it was, she knew it was honest. Santana didn't lie to other people unless she was lying to herself, and that was something she was trying with a lot of effort to stop doing. It made everyone unhappy and it wasn't like anyone needed unhappiness.

When Blaine had walked out, her blood had run cold again, and that had been when she'd teetered on the edge of the line, though it was, in all honesty, no further than she had been upon hearing Kurt's tearful phone call. It's an enormously uncomfortable and obviously frightening experience to go through all the liquid pumping inside you to just chilling itself for the briefest of flashes in a half-second wave from your head to your toes then back.

It had taken her a little while to regain herself once more, and a few minutes into the taxi ride was when she was finally calm enough to speak in sentences she'd remember later.

Blaine was sitting next to her, and Rachel on his other side, Kurt sitting in the front. Rachel had grabbed his hand and was making small talk, clearly trying to distract him from how they spent the better part of the day. She prattled about an upcoming audition and asked for his help selecting a song, and Blaine laughed quietly and said whatever she picked she'd totally kill it, and Kurt looked over his shoulder and agreed.

"It's true," Santana spoke up. "Any song you pick you'll be great at, but that doesn't mean you should pick any type of song. What kind of musical is it? What genre? What's the role? What are some major feelings your character goes through? And most importantly, how would your character sing it?" She'd gotten their attention, but she wasn't done. "You need to consider all of that, because if you just pick one of those show-stopping ballads Rachel Berry can knock out of the park, they might laugh you out of the room. That's the thing about acting - you have to be a different person. A different person isn't going to have the same tastes, or abilities, as you, Rachel, and while we all know you'll do great, you need to decide what kind of great you're going for."

Rachel appraised her for a while, and then said, "And how do you know?"

Santana smirked. "Be honest. How many times have you auditioned as Rachel Berry, until they explicitly told you to get in character, and landed the role?"

Rachel licked her lips. "There was West Side Story -"

"Let's not even bring that up," Santana rolled her eyes. "That was a high school production and you got double-cast with Mercedes, who, by the way, really should have gotten the part."

"Rachel was a great Maria," Kurt defended.

"She really was," Blaine agreed, nodding.

Santana softened some looking at the gel-head (whose head wasn't quite so gelled anymore, not that she'd say anything), but continued anyway. "Yes, she was," Santana said. "I'm not saying she wasn't. As Maria, she was fantastic. But Mercedes had the better audition when you combined all the parts together because she auditioned as Maria. Maybe a more modern version, but if Maria lived in our time period a d in our situation, she would have been what Mercedes showed them she could be. Rachel's acting was just as good as hers, and so was her singing - on a technical level. On level of being a different person, Mercedes had her beat."

"Why are you even giving me this advice?" Rachel snapped, and Santana smiled at her, the irritation clear in the Jew's voice.

"I want to be able to claim partial credit for your Broadway Debut," she answered evenly, and that dispelled any and all of Rachel's irritation, "because I know you're going to get there and I want to help."

"We all know you're going to get there," Blaine nodded again, and then stopped abruptly and squinted slightly for a moment, though nobody but Santana seemed to notice.

She reached over and took his hand. It was a small enough gesture not to really hinder what they were doing, but large enough to matter.

* * *

"Home sweet home," Santana announced, walking through the door to their apartment. "Now, Anderson, we should get you to sleep before the weekend is totally over. Do you want to sleep in your bed, or on the couch?"

"Santana?"

"Yeah?"

"Shh!"

Santana looked at the whisperer, who sat by his (shouldn't be ex-)boyfriend, who had fallen onto the couch without a word. Blaine had collapsed on the cushions, and in sleep, which he'd entered as made clear by the ever-so-soft snores coming from his throat, he looked childish; he seemed youthful and innocent and untroubled, but there was a hint of worry rooted so deeply that it was still visible enough to make him an adult - and he was beautiful.

How he'd managed to fall asleep so fast was a mystery to her. He'd walked in before her and she'd known he must have been exhausted, but she hadn't seen him fall to the sofa - but he had and he was out in the time it took to blink.

The first thing to hit her was guilt, because of course he was exhausted. He'd just moved in two weeks ago and started school the same day they finished packing, and they'd had their fight, which had been so emotionally taxing it had taken half all that time to recover fully.

Santana wasn't certain they were actually over it.

He'd gotten up in the middle of the night to stay up with Kurt, had a nap, watched a movie, and then gotten into a car accident, where he'd acquired a concussion and two large cuts that required numerous stitches. It was a given that he'd pass out like that on the softest surface he found first.

She felt guilty for not seeing it, and for making him feel like he couldn't tell them so she would have.

She looked at Kurt, incredulous but soft, and nodded to him, and then gestured for Rachel to help.

It took only a little while to shake him into a state of half-alertness, and he cracked open an eyelid and made a sound in the back of his throat was somewhere between "Yes?" and "Ugh."

"Do you want to stay here or go to your bed?" she asked him, and he rolled the one eye that was open, and then closed it again, snuggling deeper into the cushions. "Right. Couch, then." He smiled a small smile, and then he was out like a light.

Rachel put a pillow under his head, Santana draped a blanket over him, and Kurt took a deep breath and told them to go to sleep, that he'd stay with Blaine. Santana let Rachel sleep in Blaine's bed, since she was sure he wouldn't mind and didn't want to share with her, but right before he joined in Rachel and Blaine's snoring spree she peeked back out into the living room to see that Kurt was rearranging Blaine, with hands so careful and caring she could scarcely believe it, on the couch so Kurt was behind him and could drape an arm over his torso. Blaine automatically responded to the hold by turning his head towards Kurt, and even though he was sleeping, Kurt kissed his cheek, and then buried his face in Blaine's shoulder.

Santana texted Brittany a goodnight and an I love you before she went to bed. And then she followed suit after the rest of her apartment and slept.


	4. Part 4

Blaine slept late. As was entirely reasonable, considering the lack of sleep and overabundance of exhausting activities he'd had; nonetheless, his dream was peculiar.

It started with Santana. She was standing right in front of him, her lips pursed, hands on her hips, feet apart and eyebrows raised. "What?" he asked her, trying to look around to see where they were and finding that he couldn't move unless he spoke. His limbs simply didn't respond as they should have - he was frozen in place. He tried to look beyond Santana to see anyways, but it was like she was the only thing that existed. There was nothing else to see.

"I was right," she told him smugly. "He's making the both of you miserable."

"Who?" Blaine asked. "Kurt?"

Santana had pretended to clap for him then, the sarcasm in her sloppy movements serving only for her pleasure and his irritation. "And he takes the cake," she teased. "Blaine, where's Kurt right now?"

"Um…" Where had Kurt gone to sleep? The best bet would be Blaine's own bed, but Blaine wasn't actually there to see any of the arrangements made. "My bed?"

Santana shook her head. "He's right behind you."

"What, on the couch?" Blaine scoffed. "I don't think there's room."

"He made room," Santana told him, oddly earnest now. "He'll always make room for you. Make room or make time or make anything, do anything, _be_ anything for you except _yours_. He loves you with all of him that's not broken and even a few parts that are."

"This took an odd turn," Blaine remarked.

"I'm serious!" Santana clasped her hands together. "He's right behind you, right now. He can't make himself let go. Don't give up just because he's too scared to hold on as tightly as he wants to."

"He knows he can always hold onto me." When had this become the discussion? "What does that have to do with him making the both of us miserable? He's n-"

"Don't say he's not," Santana warned him. "Don't."

"But -"

"Think about it," she urged him. "What are his nightmares about?"

"Me," Blaine snapped without meaning to. How did Santana know?

"_Losing_ you," Santana corrected. "That's -"

"Did you and Rachel decide to have an intervention or something?"

"- why he didn't tell us about Adam. He lost his shield. Personally, I never really liked King George he was dating -"

"Adam's a good guy -"

"- but that doesn't matter. What matters is that he didn't either."

"What?" Now Blaine was just confused, even more so than he'd been before. "Yes, he -"

"No, he didn't." Santana wouldn't give him any room to talk. "He liked the _idea_ of him. He liked the concept of dating an older, more mature guy whose name wasn't yours. He liked being the boyfriend of that concept. He never liked Adam, at least not like that. As a friend, I'll buy, but anything more is forcing something unnatural to happen."

"What's _unnatural_ is this conversation," Blaine griped, attempting to point to her and failing. How could she move so easily and why couldn't he? "Why can't I -"

"Move?" Santana finished for him wryly. "That might have something to do with the fact that you're _stuck_ in a state of denial similar to Hummel's. Both of you believe he doesn't love you anymore."

"He doesn't. Not like he used to." Blaine wanted to bite his lip but couldn't. How was it he could talk but do nothing else? He wasn't even blinking or breathing (or feeling the effects of not doing either), just perpetually existed and sometimes voicing thoughts aloud.

"No, see?" Santana sighed and shook her head, "That's not true. Yes, he does, and always will. But you don't and that's what is destroying this for the both of you."

"I love him," Blaine could have spit fire with how hot the words came out.

"I didn't mean you didn't love him," Santana rolled her eyes, yet her voice was gentler. "I mean you don't love _you_."

Blaine would have gaped were it possible. "What does that matter?"

He found, to his incredible relief, that he could feel his heart beating again, even if he couldn't move still. But his chest rose and fell automatically with the breath he sucked in and his eyelashes graced his cheeks when he blinked. "Do you see what happens?" Santana murmured, looking over him as she approached. "Every time you stop denying something, you're a little freer."

"I -"

"You didn't deny that you don't love yourself." Santana looked at him, almost expectant, her dark eyes petulant but not uncaring. "You hate yourself, don't you?"

Blaine didn't deign to answer.

"Blaine?"

"So what?"

And he looked down as an automatic reflex and found that he could now, though he still could see nothing but Santana. Her presence seemed to be the only thing to be present besides himself. "So," Santana chuckled, though it was the saddest one he'd ever head, "how is Kurt supposed to love you?"

"He did before," Blaine muttered.

"He still does." Santana wasn't up for arguing about that. "But just because he loved you before when you hated yourself doesn't mean he can now. What are you giving to him to love?"

"Nothing," Blaine answered. "I'm not giving him anything. There's nothing left. He's already everything. I don't expect him to love me. I don't _want_ him to love me."

"Why not?"

"What's worth loving?"

"He's right behind you," Santana pointed over his shoulder. "Ask him."

He could move again. Had he just told enough repressed truths? No, that wasn't it. Santana was gone. The nothingness was gone, too, and in its wake was the familiar warmth of his eyelids - though not as familiar or warm as the arm wrapped around him and the form pressed to his back. Lean and muscular and holding him like it used to, Kurt's body was, as she'd said, right behind him. The couch cushions under him were comfortable; the pillow softened his head when he shifted it to make sure he could; the blanket draped over the both of them kept him down like a heavier gravity.

But he would never have gotten up anyway. Nothing could have made him leave that couch.

* * *

"Hey," Santana answered her phone, not bothering to check caller ID, knowing the only person who would call her so early on a Sunday before church. She fought the tiredness that threatened heartily to make her close her lids and slump back into the pillows. Her tangled hair fell around her shoulders and her skin, too pale for her liking, was even paler in the morning.

"Is he okay?"

"Nice to hear from you too," Santana teased lightly. "But yes, he's okay. He's got a concussion and two cuts with multiple stitches each, but he's sleeping on the couch with Kurt right now, so he's probably fine."

"Oh, thank god," Quinn breathed on the other line. "Rachel told me that much about his injuries, but if he's with Kurt he's good."

"If you want to talk to him you'll have to wait a while," she told her. "I'm not going to wake him up until he needs to take his meds, and if he wants to sleep again then I'm going to let him."

"So you're playing nursemaid?" Quinn inquired.

"Well…" Santana considered the implications. "I'm playing the part of 'sibling' right now, since his only one I know of is all the way across the country and the rest of the other people here are Berry and Hummel."

"Rachel could be his sibling too," Quinn suggested. "You could be his nursemaid."

"I'm not going to wait on him hand and foot," Santana grouched. "I just want to make sure he's okay."

"_Is_ he okay?"

"He will be."

"That's not what I asked."

* * *

"He's not awake," Rachel answered Kurt's phone after picking it up on the coffee table. "Hi, Burt."

"Hi, Rachel," Burt responded. "Neither of them?"

"Nope."

"Call me when they are?"

"Of course."

"Bye."

"Bye."

That was about the extent to which Burt talked to them at this point; he didn't seem capable of forming coherent sentences anymore, and those he did were short and not very eloquent. He made brief contact and then lost it, but nobody blamed him for it - two of his three sons (because Blaine definitely counted as a son) were passed out after surviving a car accident and one of them had been injured.

Rachel place the phone back and looked over her shoulder at Santana. "Again?" she asked. Rachel nodded and though Santana put on the face she used to ward people off, Rachel thought maybe she needed a hug. She didn't give it. She needed one herself, but if she was wrong, they'd both be hurt by the results of her trying.

* * *

Kurt never, ever wanted to wake up.

* * *

When Kurt woke up it took a while for him to realize that Blaine was, in fact, in front of him, snuggled up so their bodies pressed against each other, his loosed curls spilling over Kurt's face.

It took a good long time for him to actually get up. He spent forever lingering in that embrace. A small forever, but a forever nonetheless.

* * *

When he officially "got up", there was a note on the counter from Santana and Rachel. The first thing it said was to call his dad when he woke up - the second was that they'd gone out for groceries and would be back around three - the third was scrawled in Santana's writing and said simply, "Read It". Kurt didn't have to guess to know what it meant.

He looked behind him at the couch and the boy sleeping on it and wished desperately to curl up behind him again, but knew that if Blaine woke up like that it would do more damage than good.

Without even considering it like he had before - _Is this right? He'd be upset if he knew… but I have to know…_ - he searched the room for the book. He'd left it at his own apartment, but Santana must have brought it back if she'd told him to read it. He was right; he found it on the coffee table, underneath Walk Two Moons. There was a note inside the front cover and Kurt read it, already wary.

_I know you're going to wake up before him, so we went to your place and got an overnight bag. I snuck these out. Use WTM as a backup for reading if he wakes up and you're reading this. -Santana_

Kurt took a deep breath and looked over at Blaine again. He might have questioned reading the book before he actually started doing it (even though he'd felt bad lying to Blaine about it and saying he'd been reading the other book) but not he couldn't, not when it was so obvious that something needed to be done about the contents. He was only on the sixteenth page and he'd begun noticing the pattern - there were very, very rarely more good things written down than bad things.

He flipped open to page seventeen and began reading.

* * *

It wasn't until page one hundred and twelve that Kurt started making sense of the things Blaine scribbled. His mind worked so differently, using abbreviations Kurt couldn't catch, writing things in tiny lettering he had to strain to read, but it was clear it had a system - Kurt just couldn't figure out what it was. Until page one hundred and twelve.

_Right:_  
_Told the truth_  
_Bought flowers_  
_Apologized_  
_Made him happy_  
_Sang our song for him_

_Wrong:_  
_Cheated on him_  
_Told the truth_  
_Bought flowers_  
_Apologized_  
_Made him sad_  
_(/angry/hurt/scared)_  
_Sang our song for him_  
_Stayed the night after_  
_Left without making things right_  
_Tried to make things right_  
_Made things wrong_  
_Wrong_  
_Wrong_  
_Wrong_  
_Wrong_  
_Stop it Blaine_  
_Stop it_  
_Wrong_  
_Cried and made him feel guilty_  
_Cried_  
_Wrong_

There were splotches where the ink he'd written in that day had run and been ruined by tears that had wrinkled and hardened the paper. The first time Kurt had seen a page like that in the journal had been when Blaine was recounting the whole Chandler incident; he'd written that his wrongs were caring about himself enough to distance himself from Kurt and that he was clueless about what to do. This was worse, ten times worse.

With Chandler, Kurt had hurt him. He'd done nothing wrong, and yet that was the first page on which he'd written "Was born" under "Wrong". IT had gotten better after that, but on this page he didn't even seem strong enough to write about how much he hated himself; he had to physically tell himself to stop doing something - most likely crying, because he didn't feel he was worth anyone's tears, let alone his own - and he couldn't even say it aloud.

Kurt hadn't hurt him, or so he'd thought before he'd read the last entry. Blaine had listed all their phone conversations, how he was starting to give up, what exactly he was doing to save the relationship, how badly it was working out, and almost all the lines were filled with Kurt's mistakes, not Blaine's. Blaine seemed incapable of differentiating between the two.

Kurt dared to flip the next page.

_Right:_  
_Put the blade down_

_Wrong:_  
_Put the blade down_

Kurt sat there, blinking, trying to understand why Blaine had underlined and gone over the words repeatedly on both lists, until he figured out what the words meant; he reeled back in horror and looked closer at the spots on the page; they were stains, dark stains faded by time - almost a year's worth of time - but not erased, still there. Only two of the drops were there, and they'd seemed to leech into the paper instead of make the paper turn in on itself.

Blood. Blood stains.

_Intentional_ blood stains?

Kurt tried to make sense of it. Those were the only words written on the page. The ink was black, from a good pen, like most of the other pages. It was full and thick and his writing was cursive, like it was whenever he was writing for himself and not for anyone else to read (as Kurt had discovered when finding his small folder full of original songs), and it was written as if rushed, not quite as tidy as everything else, slightly sloppy in the formation of the letters.

The words were blurring. Blurring together, shaking, the pages were rustling, why were - oh. He was trembling. He put the book in his lap and pressed his palms to his thighs, trying to make both stay still. He took deep breaths, but the air kept getting caught and disappearing when it met the lump in his throat; that same lump made his eyes sting, and he squeezed them shut and ground his teeth, flexing every muscle he could starting at his head and moving down to his toes.

By the time he was done with that, a fresh tear had landed on the page's corner, and Kurt, realizing what the soft sound was, gasped a quiet gasp and moved to flip the page.

_Right:_  
_Got up_  
_Went to school_  
_Ate food_  
_Talked to people_

_Wrong:_  
_Cried_  
_Cried again_  
_Cried again_  
_Locked self in bathroom during 6th period_  
_Got up_  
_Went to school_  
_Ate food_  
_Talked to people_  
_Kept breathing_  
_Thought about Kurt_  
_Cried again_  
_Found old scrapbook_  
_Cried again_  
_Stop crying Blaine_  
_Stop it_  
_Stop_  
_Cried_  
_Yelled at myself_  
_Thought about Kurt_  
_Cried_

Kurt raised a hand to his forehead, unsure as to what to do with it, his joints stiff and muscles unresponsive, his fingers slightly bent to different degrees each, and each of them clawing at his chilled and tear-streaked face.

_Right:_  
_Made it a day without crying_

_Wrong:_  
_Cut myself again_  
_Cried right after midnight so it would be a whole day still_  
_Thought about Kurt_  
_Couldn't make myself eat_  
_Snapped at Artie_  
_Ignored Sam_  
_Forgot homework_  
_No breakfast_  
_Wasted hours staring at the ceiling_  
_Thought about Kurt_  
_Told parents I was still gay_  
_Let them yell at me_  
_Yelled at myself_  
_Again_  
_And again_  
_Stop yelling at yourself_  
_Stop talking to yourself_  
_Stop talking_  
_Stop living_  
_Didn't die_  
_Thought about Kurt_

Kurt had to forcefully bite the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out.

_Right:_  
_Felt alive_

_Wrong:_  
_Cut in order to do so_

Kurt felt like there were a million colossal steel-toed boots slamming into his ribcage. He wiped at his cheeks stiffly, his body moving in jerking motions only accompanied by the shakes of the rest of him when his sobs tore silently out of him.

_Right:_  
_Sang_

_Wrong:_  
_Sang_  
_Didn't eat_  
_Didn't sleep_  
_Cried_  
_Yelled at myself_  
_Thought about Kurt_  
_Let pillows lose the smell of him_  
_Cried again_  
_Forgot homework_  
_Late to school_  
_Went to the workout room and boxed_  
_Called Cooper and thought he'd listen_  
_Thought someone would listen_  
_Forgot to cry_  
_Forgot to yell at myself_  
_Got worse_  
_Stopped feeling so much_  
_Thought about Kurt_  
_Wished Kurt was here_  
_Broke a lamp_  
_Used shard to cut_  
_Smiled_

Kurt wanted to scream. How had Santana done this? How had she stomached reading this? His stomach rolled and he bit back retches of pure vile, the disgust at the pictures it put in his head. How had no one noticed?

But then, he hadn't noticed either. He'd been refusing to speak to Blaine.

_Right:_  
_Auditioned for Grease_  
_Got grades back up_  
_Ate again_  
_Told people I'm fine_  
_Replaced the lamp_

_Wrong:_  
_Cried at my audition for Grease_  
_Only ate one piece of chicken_  
_Lied and said I'm fine_  
_Sang_  
_Thought about Kurt_  
_Gave up_  
_Couldn't make myself give up_

It was like bad, realistic poetry. Except it should have never been realistic. Or real. But it was. Horribly real. Terribly, awfully, agonizingly real. And a hell of a lot more painful than even his side of the breakup had been. How could he not have realized?

_Right:_  
_Performed Grease_

_Wrong:_  
_Saw Kurt_  
_Talked to Kurt_  
_Made Kurt walk away_  
_Thought about Kurt_  
_Cried_  
_Yelled at myself_  
_Ripped my shirt_  
_Wasted all the hot water in the shower_  
_Thought about Kurt_  
_Threw Margaret Thatcher Dog in anger_  
_Got angry_  
_It's not his fault it's yours_  
_Stop crying_  
_Stop_  
_Wrong_  
_Wrong_  
_Wrong_  
_Wrong_  
_So wrong_  
_Stop hanging on to him Blaine_  
_STOP TALKING TO YOURSELF BLAINE_  
_Couldn't stop talking to myself_  
_Cried again_  
_Thought about Kurt  
Fell in love with him all over again  
I hurt Kurt_  
_I'm so sorry_

"Kurt?" Blaine's waking voice was so innocent that Kurt was yanked out of the spiral of depression the journal had become. Panic overtook him, and he placed the journal right back on the coffee table, and snatched up _Walk Two Moons_, opening it to a random page. Kurt had never quite given much thought to his ability to school his features and act as well as he did, but he was enormously grateful for it now; Blaine's eyes, fluttering weakly as he woke up, saw nothing wrong with him except the coloration. Kurt couldn't hide the tear stains fast enough, or make his puffy red eyes less puffy, or his nose less runny. As Blaine blinked into consciousness and saw his state, alarm spread all throughout him. "Kurt, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Kurt answered, "Just… sad book and I'm still rattled because of the accident."

"It wasn't your fault," Blaine was quick to reply. "You know that, right? It was not your fault. At all."

"Yeah, I know." But it wasn't your either. "I just read the closest book I saw. It was on top of this journal-looking thing. Santana brought this back from my apartment -"

"Journal?" Blaine asked, his voice much too casual.

"I think," Kurt said, turning around and picking up the book, showing it to him. "I didn't read it, it looked private."

"How did that get out here?" Blaine mused lightly.

Kurt shrugged. "Santana probably saw it and put it out here so you'd have to tell her what it was. She goes through her roommates' stuff, it's a thing she does. It's not bad, really, she stops after she's sure she's seen everything."

Blaine rolled his eyes fondly. "I'm going to have to adjust to her quirks, aren't I?" He sighed. "Well, it's my journal, just some lists I make sometimes. No big deal, but it is kind of personal. If I could -"

"Oh, yeah, sure," and Kurt handed him the book. He felt immensely powerless the very moment it was no longer in his hands and in Blaine's, and he was terrified about what might be written in it. "No problem."

"Are you sure you're not getting tired of that book?" Blaine asked then, pointing to the one he was holding. "That's, what, the third time in two and a half days you've read it?"

"It could be the five hundredth time and I wouldn't be tired of it," Kurt attempted a smile, though he'd be damned it if looked convincing and anything like what he was going for, judging by the look on Blaine's face.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Blaine asked him again.

"Yeah, I am," Kurt reiterated. "I'm fine." _You're not._

"If you're sure…"

"I am," Kurt grinned then, forcing his face to relax into the position.

"Maybe you should take a break from the book," Blaine suggested. "It always makes you cry and I hate seeing you cry."

Kurt laughed, far too nervous and high-pitched to sound real, but Blaine didn't seem to catch it. "I get your point," Kurt set the book aside. "Now, don't you have meds to take?"

* * *

When Santana got home carrying groceries bags with Rachel in tow, the first thing Blaine did was hold the journal out to her and let her see his face with no pretense behind it.

He'd never seen her more startled. It was unnerving to know he'd been the one to make her so suddenly vulnerable and he hated himself that much more instantly, so he slid the mask he wore back in place easily and instead just asked, with perhaps more fear in his voice than he wanted, "How much did you read?"

Santana, for once, seemed startled and ashamed to answer. Her dark eyes flickered across his face, searching for a hole, something to show her what she'd seen once more, but she found none, and it drove her mad just the smallest bit. She sought out something; an illusion, an assurance that what she'd seen was not an illusion, but Blaine offered none. Her mouth hung open slightly and she stayed rooted to the spot, Rachel, behind her, waiting for her to move, having not heard Blaine's question.

"Santana, are you going to move?" Rachel huffed. "I've got the heavy load, you gave me the cans."

"I…" Santana was at a total loss. Blaine jerked his head to the left, indicating that she move that way, and so she did instantly, her feet shuffling, reacting in a way very unlike Santana. Blaine wondered how long it would take before she was back to her normal self.

And then he remembered that the last conversation they'd had in reality and not his dream had been soft, and gentle, and she'd taken care of him and given him what he told her he needed. The dream had been just that, a dream. He had no reason to assume she'd be back to normal Santana around him yet. She was still shaken, still scared, though he doubted she'd admit it while someone else was in the room.

His features softened instantly, the accusation dissipating when Rachel walked past her into the apartment and struggled to close the door. Kurt, still in the phone with his dad in Blaine's bedroom (he could hear them if he listened), had no clue what was going on. Neither did Rachel.

"You're awake," Santana spoke to him finally.

"Hm?" Rachel asked, turning to understand Santana's sentence, and saw him for the first time. "Blaine!"

"How much?" Blaine asked again, kinder this time, reverting his eyes back to Santana.

But no matter how taken aback she was, she was still Santana Lopez. And she didn't stutter, or, if she could help it, lie. "All of it."

All of it.

Every page, every word. Every spatter of blood, every stain from a tear, everything he'd kept inside for a _reason_. All of it. She'd read all of it.

Blaine felt more bare than he ever had. He'd suspected Kurt might have started reading and then been ashamed; but if he'd read only the first couple pages it was no big deal. But if he'd followed the note that he left in the book, it was a bit farther than that.

Santana knew where his scars were. Santana knew he had scars. Did Kurt? But that didn't matter. She knew, she knew everything. And he knew almost nothing about her. She'd seen every crevice in his head put down on paper, all the secrets that were secrets because of something, all the little things he'd done, thought, said. She'd lived his break-up, she'd gone through cheating, she… oh, god, she knew about him being disowned. She knew everything.

All of it.

"You…"

"I'm sorry," was the next thing to pass her lips. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have and I know it but Blaine you need to tell me, tell _us_, these things! This is serious, you -"

"Stop." She already knew, Kurt might know, he didn't want Rachel to overhear.

"What's going on?" Rachel asked, innocent. Blaine envied her.

"You know I stopped, then," Blaine addressed Santana again, paying no mind to Rachel. "I stopped… you know."

"I also know you started to begin with," she countered. "I know everything. You -"

"I know, Santana," Blaine snapped. "I know better than you. You've only read it, not lived it." If only that were true.

"But was living it better or worse than what I read?" She was begging now, the bags she'd been carrying falling to the ground. "I want to help!"

"Then do me a favor," Blaine bit at her. "Don't ever touch this book. Don't look for it. Tell Kurt to stop reading it. Don't let Rachel even know what it is. Mention it to nobody, not even Brittany. _Don't you dare_."

"You're really mad about this?" she demanded. "Blaine, this is stuff people go to _therapy_ for, and you're dealing with it all on your own!"

"Yes, and I'm getting better at it!" Blaine hurled back, the word like venom flying towards he so she flinched back. "On my own! I'm _fine_!"

"What happened?!" Rachel squeaked.

"You are not fine," Santana argued, her voice quieter, the words spoken in a lower tone, and she moved closer. "And I could point to the proof."

"All it is is proof that I wasn't fine," Blaine hissed. "I _am_ now."

"You're lying."

"I'm not a liar!"

"Look at me!" Santana commanded. "Look at me and tell me that there is nothing you're unhappy about!"

"Of course there's things I'm unhappy about!" Blaine exploded. "For god's sake, I'm human! I'm a person! Everyone is sad about something! I'm unhappy that I don't have the kind of life where I can just fly home to visit my parents whenever I'm homesick! I'm unhappy that I have a roommate that insists there's more wrong with me than there is! I'm unhappy that I don't have a job, that I haven't begun my essay for class yet, that I have yet to do an official NYADA performance! I'm unhappy about a little tiny things that don't matter any more than what I eat for dinner. I'm unhappy about things I _can_ and _will_ fix! _Of course I'm unhappy!_ I'm just past the point of waiting for people to help me!"

"You're past the point of accepting help, because you don't think you deserve it!"

"What the hell is going on out here?!" Kurt trilled, sticking his head past the curtain and into the room.

"I don't know!" Rachel wailed.

"There's more you're unhappy about," Santana went on. "Let me -"

"Let you help?!" Blaine scoffed. "Let you help?! Santana, look at you! You're unhappy, too! You're just as miserable as I am, probably even more, and you're sure as hell not telling me anything or letting me help!"

"I'm perfectly happy!"

"Then why did you break down when we had a fight like this just last week?" Blaine taunted. "Huh, Lopez? You know, when you kicked me, and yelled at me -"

"I didn't know then -"

"And you _shouldn't_ know now!" Blaine was past reason. He was barely aware that Rachel was inching her way over to Kurt, who was watching them, mesmerized by the fight. "I'm not a book, Santana! Just because I wrote in one doesn't give you the right to read it _or_ me! You have problems, too, and don't say you don't! It doesn't matter how small they are, problems are problems."

"Someone out there has problems worse than mine," Santana grit her teeth.

"Someone out there is always going to have worse problems," Blaine felt the anger draining, leaving with each breath he exhaled, and saw the same happening with her. "Just like how someone is always going to be perfectly happy. Just because there's different standards to meet elsewhere doesn't change the fact that the standards you can't meet here and now are upsetting you."

"I want to help you."

"I want to help _you_."

"I don't need help."

"Liar."

"I'm not a liar!"

"Look at me," Blaine ordered with almost no force. "Look at me and tell me there is nothing you're unhappy about."

Santana didn't reply. Her face was red and her hands were in fists, her hair falling in front of her eyes, her posture bent forward, confrontational, and yet caving inward to keep herself intact. Silence reigned for her and controlled the room until Blaine spoke up again.

"Look," he said, tossing the book onto the couch. "I love you. I really do. I promise." She narrowed her eyes, not trusting the direction he was going. "But we both just need to admit that we are very, very broken and very, very sad people, and leave it at that for a little while. We can fight over it later, but for right now that's as far as we need to go, so long as he start somewhere on even ground."

"There's a lot to fight about." But he noticed her fingers uncurled.

He took a hesitant step forward. "And we'll get there."

Kurt waited, and Rachel waited, and Blaine waited, and then finally, _finally_, Santana nodded curtly, and asked, "How's your head?"

"It's killing me, thanks for asking." In all honesty, the room was starting to swim, but he'd rather tell her what sounded like an exaggeration than that particular truth.

Santana crossed the distance between them, kissed his forehead, careful to avoid the stitches, smoothed back his hair (how had he forgotten to gel?) and hugged him fiercely, her arms tight around his neck, her body up against his, her head buried in the cook of her elbow and his shoulder. There was that warmth again, that odd tingly feeling that Blaine used to get rarely from Cooper, that kind of sibling-made-me-feel-good spread of ease throughout all of you all at once. He was reminded of how she'd asked him in a whisper at the hospital if he would need Kurt there and had accepted it when he said yes. He was reminded of how she'd held his hand in the taxi on the way home, how she'd asked where he wanted to sleep, left a note on the counter for them.

"Thanks for taking care of me," he murmured into her ear, closing his eyes into the hug and wiring his arms around her torso.

"Same to you," Santana murmured back.

"What the hell?" Rachel whispered loudly to Kurt, who whispered back, "I have no idea."


	5. Part 5

Blaine was beautiful.

It wasn't like Kurt was a stranger to that fact. Looking at him, no matter what he was doing, he was beautiful. His skin was a color that not only seemed to make any room he walked into warmer, but it highlighted his dark features into a kind of glow. His curls when he didn't have them gelled spilled over and tangled with themselves and flopped around casually, setting shadows dancing off of them and onto Blaine's cheeks. When it was gelled, it was easier to see his eyes, sometimes golden, sometimes gray, sometimes a mixture of both and occasionally he'd see flecks of blue and green hiding amongst the twine-like colors. His eyelashes were long and rested just above the height of his cheekbones when he looked down, and his eyebrows were adorably descriptive as to his mood; most times they were somehow triangular, but when they were flat at all something was very, very wrong. And his lips were soft and supple and delicate while still being strong, and the words and music that came out of them were just as pleasing. His facial structure in general was amazing, and his body looked sculpted by some artist Kurt needed to thank a million times over; not because it was perfect, or buff, or built, but because it was strong and toned and realistic, and small, and bouncy and still in control.

There had been one time when Kurt had spent the night at Blaine's house because nobody else was going to be home, and they'd taken advantage of the solitude. That was a fantastic memory and one he relived more often than he should, but not just because of how intimate it had been in the physical way. They'd fallen asleep swaddled in blankets and hidden among pillows, clutching each other close. When Kurt had woken up, Blaine hadn't been there. He'd felt just the briefest twinge of panic before he spotted Blaine, standing in front of the window.

He hadn't bothered getting dressed. He was standing, his hands clasped behind his back loosely, his fingers intertwining and just twisting lazily among each other. The edges of the glass in the pane were frosted over, the tiny, intricate pattern fading quickly to show the outside world already covered in the white that was falling slowly from the sky. The world outside would have been dark with the remnants of night if not for the snow. The contrast that Blaine's body was thrown into letting the light from the frozen crystals collecting outside wash over him in the midst of a dark room set every contour of his body into half-shadow, outlined but still a glossy, familiar silhouette.

The air was still and every movement was so pronounced it stole Kurt's breath. Blaine seemed to know exactly when he woke up, because he turned to face him, his eyes standing out brightly against the lingeringly still light and lack of it that slipped and slid over his features. "It's snow," he had said, his voice low and rich but quiet, demanding the attention of everything that had ever been created and receiving it unequivocally. Not _It has snowed_, not _It's snowing_, but a statement that the temporarily placed white flakes drifting from a white sky were as beautiful as Kurt found Blaine.

That was part that Kurt remembered when he thought about that night; waking up in the middle of it, warm and cozy, staring right at the most breathtaking person to have ever existed. Kurt often found himself short of breath even recalling it.

That beauty had never left. Looking at Blaine now, the curls still draping themselves over his forehead and resting on his pillow, the blanket tucked up over top of his shoulder, his eyes shut and his lips parted just a little, he was still that same person. He was covered now, and barely any of him was barely visible, but even the lump under the covers were enough to bring a different lump back to Kurt's throat.

He really was the most utterly and heart-shatteringly beautiful person Kurt had ever met and he wished desperately he could ever hope to meet someone to challenge that title, because finding Blaine beautiful - and Kurt knew there were plenty of other words he could use instead but beautiful was the only one to really do him justice and that hardly came close - was not supposed to happen anymore.

He knew there were arguments against it. The whole "I can find them attractive without being attracted to them" that he and Blaine had used numerous times when describing women, but the truth was that Kurt could apply that honestly to everyone but Blaine. Blaine was always the anomaly, and even with cuts and bruises and medication to take and sleep to catch up on, he was remarkable, he was radiant.

"Kurt?" Rachel's voice called, the sound of the curtain pulling back behind him accompanying it. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah," he said. Putting Blaine to sleep had been easy. He was exhausted anyways, and it was late. He'd stayed up longer than he should have talking to Burt and then Cooper and then Sam, and it had worn him out; so Kurt had tucked him in like he used to when he'd had surgery on his eye, and had hummed him a lullaby. The song hadn't even registered with him, but he knew subconsciously it would lull him to sleep. It wasn't until Blaine had already started doing his half-silent snores that Kurt had recognized the tune as _Blackbird_. "Yeah, I just… wanted to make sure he got to sleep."

"He's asleep now," Rachel pointed out. "We need to go home. Santana can take care of him."

"Rachel?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think he'd hate me if I read the rest of the journal?"

Rachel sighed. "I have no clue what the deal is with this journal, Kurt, but though I think Blaine would be really angry, I'm positive that he will never hate you."

"Good." Kurt bent down and opened the drawer in the nightstand and pulled out the book he'd seen Blaine stuff in hastily, thinking nobody would see, probably so he could hide it better later. The guilt and disappointment in himself came back as soon as his fingers brushed the cover, but he knew he had to finish reading it. If he left off where he had forever, he'd be stuck thinking like Blaine had, warping good things into bad things and being perpetually sad. He needed to know what Santana knew… he loved Blaine. He was his best friend. You're supposed to love best friends, right?

_Not the way you love him._

Kurt silenced the voice in his head but he couldn't silence Rachel. "Kurt…" she warned.

"Let him be mad at me," Kurt said, finally tearing his eyes away from the sleeping figure. Rachel was looking at him with pity and something else he recognized but only just as worry; she was good at masking that. Nonetheless, she held out a hand for him to take, and he took it. Her grasp was firm and she squeezed his palm gently, so he squeezed back, and then she led him away. Kurt couldn't held glancing back. Blaine hadn't moved, but the way Kurt viewed him had. It was a whole new kind of beautiful mixed with the old. A sad kind.

Santana saw him carrying the journal. She was sitting on the couch, flipping through TV channels restlessly, a bored expression on her face, when she caught sight of the book in his hands. Her eyes flickered from it to him to it again and then back up. By the time he stood in front of the door, she'd done the change more times than necessary, and looked more forlorn each time.

Kurt waited for her to say something, but she didn't, and so he said, "Bye, Santana."

She pursed her lips and then licked them, as if she were going to respond; but they waited much longer than they needed to, and she still didn't talk. And so Rachel waved awkwardly and then opened the door, sliding through it and pulling Kurt with her.

Right before it closed, he heard her whisper, "Bye," back to them - or maybe just to him.

* * *

Kurt was staying late for a collaboration project in one of the classes he didn't have with Rachel. Her meeting with her professor had gone well, the one she'd finished with right before the accident happened (Kurt still needed a new truck but he was refusing to let his dad help out out of guilt) where he'd asked her to re-try the song she'd had to record and told her he'd gotten her an audition for a new musical that was supposed to be respectable if not modest. Oddly enough, his advice had been similar to Santana's in a lot of ways, more about becoming a character than just playing one… she'd been more willing to listen when the person talking had an influence on her academic future, though.

But she sat at home, going over her scales once again, looking at the mirror and going over the information on the audition she'd been given yet again. With each tick of the clock she went up a note, and when it got so high not even she could hit it she went down until she couldn't reach again. It got boring after a while, but Rachel just liked hearing her voice; nobody else tended to listen to her, so _someone_ had to, even if it was just her.

Kurt's phone rang.

It had been vibrating constantly with new texts since a little after she got home and it had been about two hours, and she was fed up with it. She immediately stopped her singing in the middle of a high F (ah, what memories that note brought back) and answered it. "Hello, Kurt's phone."

"Rachel?"

The voice on the other line was strained and breathless and just the slightest bit hoarse, and Rachel had a feeling the caller had been shouting for help for quite a long time. "Blaine?"

"Where's Kurt?"

"He's still at school, he left his phone here," Rachel said. "Have you been the one texting?"

"Yes," Blaine responded, and there was a sound like shuffling and Blaine swore through what was obviously gritted teeth.

"What happened?" Rachel asked, her brow furrowing. "You sound hurt. Did you take your meds?"

"I was going to," Blaine answered. "I was trying to find the bottle but I couldn't see and everything was blurry and I got dizzy and I… fell." He sounded so sheepish admitting it Rachel almost wanted to pet him. "And I can't get up."

"So you've fallen and you can't get up?"

"I'd be the perfect new image for a revival of that commercial," he sighed. "I need… um… help. Help! That's right. Sorry, I blanked there for a minute."

"Blaine, hold your hand out in front of you." She needed to know how many fingers he saw, just to get a basic idea of how bad off his sight was.

"Um… I can't."

"Why not?"

"I kind of… landed on my arm wrong and I can't… move… it…"

"Oh. Oh, sweetie," Rachel cried out, jumping to her feet. "I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Don't hang up!" He was begging now. "Don't hang up, I'm scared."

"I won't hang up," Rachel promised, sliding her free arm into her jacket and shifting her phone from one hand to the next so she could mirror the movement on the other side. "I'll stay on the phone the whole way there, okay? I'll be there."

"It hurts."

"I know, sweetie, I know," she crooned. "Can you tell me how you landed?"

"No." The frustration had made his voice thick and she could tell tears were coming. "I can't - I can't see, and everything is weird and half of me is numb and I c-can't -"

"Shh, Blaine, it's alright," Rachel soothed, bolting out the door and barely remembering to lock it behind her. "You're alright. Can you tell me what parts of your body are numb?"

"Um… um, my right arm," Blaine started. She'd never heard him use the word 'um' so much. "And my right shoulder, and I can barely feel my neck. And my back is all stiff and it's hard to move my legs. I think I'm bleeding but I don't know where from and I can't see it. I can't see anything. I can't see, I can't see, I can't -"

"You're going to be perfectly fine," Rachel assured him, doubting her words even as they came out. "You're going to be okay, I swear it. I'm getting a cab now." So that was a lie, she still wasn't out of the building, but she was close to it, on the last flight of stairs before she could rush out the door. "Why do you think your back is stiff?"

"I d-don't _know_!"

"Calm, Blaine, I need you to stay calm for me," she reminded, almost plead with, him. "I know it's hard and you're scared, but I need you to stay calm."

"Santana won't pick up her phone," Blaine wept, and Rachel realized that yes, he was weeping, but she didn't have any clue why. "She just won't. And Kurt wasn't answering and I know why now but I've been shouting for help and nobody can get to me and I can't move."

So he was scared. That was a perfectly normal reaction to his situation, but she'd never thought Blaine would break down like this. Blaine was strong and sure and certain of his abilities and even if he was wrong sometimes he was respectful. He seemed to have deteriorated in the span of just a few minutes from simply ashamed to terrorized. What had him so frightened?

"I know, I know, I'm coming," Rachel told him, honestly this time as she slipped inside the cab. She held the phone away from her ear for a moment and covered the mouthpiece to tell the driver the address and fling some money over the seat at him to cover the short distance, and when she brought it back Blaine was full-out panicking.

"Rachel, Rachel, I don't know what to do, I just want to be able to take my medicine, I want to go to sleep but I want to do my homework and I want to go home but this is supposed to _be_ home but it's not because I'm alone here and home is where being alone doesn't happen -"

"That's not true," she interrupted him. "Alone happens at home sometimes, but in a real home you never get lonely. Alone and lonely are two vastly different things. Right now, you're lonely. But you aren't alone, I swear. I'm coming."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry -"

"Hey, shh sweetie, don't be sorry, it's not your fault -"

"Yes it is, it all is, it's all my fault, I'm so sorry -"

"All you did was fall down -"

"I was the one that distracted Kurt when he was driving -"

"It was the other driver's fault -"

"- and if I hadn't done that I wouldn't have a concussion -"

"You had no way of changing what happened -"

"- and then I wouldn't have scared everyone so much -"

"You're scaring me right now -"

"- and then I wouldn't have fallen -"

"Falling wasn't your fault, I promise -"

"- and then you wouldn't have to bother with me -"

"You're not a bother, Blaine -"

"- and waste your time on me and I would be able to take care of myself -"

"Sometimes even the best of us can't do that, it's not something personal, we all go through it -"

"- and I just want to sleep and sleep -"

"It's okay to be tired -"

"- and never wake up."

"What?"

The driver was looking at her in the mirror as if she were insane, but she didn't care. "I don't ever want to wake up," Blaine cried, "Waking up hurts, and falling asleep hurts, and breathing hurts and crying about it hurts and there's so much hurt everywhere -"

"Who's hurting you?" Rachel murmured. Had someone been bullying him somehow? Who would do that? It was only his third week at NYADA and he'd just been in an accident.

"Not me," Blaine sobbed, "Not just me, them. Everyone. Everyone hurts and I - I c-can't stop it and that's what hurts the m-most is that I w-want t-to help but I can't -"

"We're here," the driver told her, and she was out of the vehicle faster than he could give her her change, and flying into the building, her hair whipping behind her.

"I'm almost there, Blaine," Rachel assured him, racing for the stairs. "I'm in the building, I'm coming up."

"I can't unlock the d-door."

"I've got the key," she reminded him. As she jumped the stairs two at a time, never more glad for her rigorous morning exercise routine, she could feel her heartbeat accelerating more than it already was. "I'm almost there, I'm on your floor. I'm coming, I'm coming," she added, when a choking and/or tearing sound crossed the line. She sprinted down the hallway and stomped to a halt outside the door to their apartment, shoving the key into the lock and twisting it forcefully, flinging the door open and tossing the phone aside. "Blaine?!" she called out.

"Rachel."

"I'm here, right here!" She wished she could keep the tremor out of her voice. She yanked the key out of the lock and slammed the door, dropping the key and discarding her jacket as she tried to find his voice. She didn't see him anywhere in the small apartment; he didn't seem to be around, but she knew he was somewhere, she'd heard his voice. "I came, I came, I'm right here," she blabbered.

"Rachel, I'm in the k-kitchen -"

"Oh!" So_ that's_ why she couldn't see him. She turned and lurched forward, jumping through the small entryway into their tiny, cramped kitchen. She'd barely stepped into it when she saw him, and her breath caught in her throat and brought tears to her eyes immediately. "_Blaine_."

He'd landed painfully, and that was more than obvious. His right arm was underneath him, twisted further than it ever should have been, his elbow caught between his back and the cold, tiled floor. She could see why his back was stiff; he must have landed hard enough to have had his elbow dig into his spine, the lower and more sensitive part at that, and his legs were indeed completely still as they lay in front of him. But his shoulder's stitches, the ones that were supposed to take care of the cut from the glass wound he'd gotten in the accident, had apparently failed, and the entire sleeve from that point on was drenched in red; that same red trickled down and pooled on the floor beneath him. His shoulder was out of place, too, and she hoped that the wrong set of the bones was simply a dislocation and not a bone having broken and stuck itself totally out of place.

But his face was the worst part. Never mind that his lower lip was the tiniest bit bloody and his right eye was swelling, he was sobbing, and red, and gasping for breath, and chanting her name under his breath again and again, his hair, finally gelled how he liked for the day, starting to soak up some of the crimson from the floor. His face was covered in spots of blood and trails of tears and was ashen in color; he didn't move his neck, so he couldn't see her enter, though he could hear her just fine; the moment she said his name, he gasped and spasmed with the arm that had been holding his phone and sent it flying.

"Shh, shh," she dropped to her knees, trying to keep her clothes and hands away from the ever-growing pool. "Blaine, I'm here. I'm going to take care of you, you'll be alright."

"I'm sorry, I'm s-sorry, I'm so done I'm so sorry just let me sleep I want to sleep I want to die -"

"You're _not_ going to die and you can't fall asleep on me now," Rachel held firm the words, though her voice shook when it carried them. "I need you to stay awake and tell me where it hurts."

But she learned he couldn't tell her. At least half an hour passed before she figured it out; he was in so much pain his body had numbed itself and had basically shut off the parts of his brain that could recognize where the pain came from, and he was so far gone and terrified he couldn't tell her even if he'd been fine. And she had no clue why he was so scared. He'd been remarkably put together the entire time he'd been in New York; save for his fights with Santana, which anyone would expect, and the occasional but understandable exhaustion, he'd been handling everything really well, or so it had seemed. Why was this his breaking point? What was so profound in this occurrence in his mind that triggered such a huge response?

She was almost too busy trying to figure out how to help to remember to feel.

Almost, but not quite.

Her hands shook and her voice quavered and her hair was brushed out of her face several times and it took forever for her to just sit Blaine upright and by then they were both crying, though Rachel was for more in control. Every time she touched him Blaine flinched, and though it must have only caused him more pain he'd only grow more silent and yet louder by comparison. When he could no longer hold in a yelp, he wailed it, tears streaming down and mingling with the blood she tried to slow by wrapping a dish towel around it.

She sat him up so his back was on the cupboards and started cleaning him. She cleaned his lip and his eye and washed his face (not that it mattered, it was shining with fresh tears within moment) and had him practice wiggling his feet and moving his legs. She had him turn his head this way and that, using his neck, and checked his sight with the fingers trick. She held up three. His answer was one, and when she inhaled sharply, he begged her forgiveness and said he could do better.

Every word out of his mouth sent a knife twisting more and more angrily in the pit of her stomach.

He was shaking so badly by the time she got to looking at his shoulder, and had lost so much blood, she was sure he would pass out before he calmed down, and the thought was even more heartbreaking than even this was. Rachel was really clueless; she had no idea what to do. It was fairly easy to tell by the faint amount of swelling around the shoulder that it was just a dislocation, but she'd be damned before she fixed it herself; and the cut on his shoulder was ghastly. Open and raw, she saw more of the insides of a human body than she ever thought she would outside of school, and it repulsed her knowing that the thick, sticky liquid she washed out of Blaine's hair along with his gel was the thing that kept him alive and yet was leaving him.

Blaine's cries grew weaker and weaker until at last he closed his eyes.

The first thing Rachel did was scream and they flew open again. "DON'T!" she bellowed, "DON'T _EVER_ CLOSE YOUR EYES ON ME!"

He couldn't even manage a response.

The dislocation had been so violent and sudden it had ripped the stitches - or rather, from the look of it, ripped what the stitches were sewn into. It was truly horrific and Rachel fought down the urge to vomit several hundred times before she managed to get him to his feet.

As soon as he was standing upright - more like being carried by her while dragging his feet - the front door opened. "Anderson, I'm home."

"San," Blaine muttered, his speech slurred and barely even spoken for how soft it was. Rachel was ready to cry out the heart that had somehow become lodged in her windpipe.

"Santana!" Rachel called, desperation controlling her voice, "You have to help!"

Santana was in the room before she finished her sentence and went as pale as a slab of pure marble when she saw Blaine. Santana had facial expressions for shock, and hurt, and anger, and fear, and guilt - but Rachel had only ever seen her the way she was now once before, and that was when Finn had asked her why she didn't just come out of the closet and she'd been standing in the hallway, incapable of moving, or speaking, or doing anything.

This was the same look, but she looked ready to have literally used nothing but her hand to saw a man in half. She was _livid_. But Rachel couldn't find it in her to care.

"He fell," Rachel explained. "I've been trying to help, but we need to get him to a hospital. He lost so much blood -"

Santana's eyes flickered to the pool on the floor and she shuddered, and then said, "Let's go."

* * *

Could he not catch a break for _one minute_?!

One minute. That would be great, just one minute of no pain or worry or concerns, just existing in a state of wonderful, oblivious contentment. Could he not just have that?!

Although, in all honestly, he did feel a bit like that now. It was so difficult to focus on everything around him that it made it seem like there was nothing to focus on; and though he was cold, and tired, and felt like screaming in agony every time Santana accidentally jostled his shoulder, things weren't so bad. Kurt was safe. He wasn't sure about happy, but Kurt was safe. That thought tended to make everything seem brighter.

But, to answer his own question, no, he couldn't get a break, not even for a minute. He hadn't meant to fall. Anyone could have seen that. He really hadn't meant to fall. He'd gotten home after school while Santana was starting her shift at Callbacks, and he'd been due to take his medicine an hour ago. He hadn't brought it with him to NYADA, he'd forgotten, but he thought an hour wouldn't make a difference. By the time he got to the kitchen, he was so dizzy he was incapable of telling where he was, if he hadn't known already he was in the kitchen - he tried reaching up for a cabinet and the next thing he knew the counter was slamming into his face and he was crumpling on the ground in a blaze of hurt.

And now he was - somewhere. Outside, possibly, because there was wind. Or maybe that was his imagination. Santana and Rachel's voices still hovered around his head but he couldn't make sense of what they were saying.

This wasn't happening. It was bad enough that he'd gotten hurt in the first place; he didn't need this. None of them needed this. How was he supposed to stop being a burden to others if things like this kept happening?

Wait, the wind was gone. There were quiet but a few loud things here, but he couldn't tell what they were. People. There were people. Sad people? He couldn't tell. Why were there sad people? Something had happened.

He was being jostled again. He heard Santana apologize like she had the last few times, but it didn't feel like her hands that were moving him. A whimper passed his lips… right? He couldn't tell. He couldn't see, he was blind, he couldn't see, no, he could see but he couldn't understand, that was it. He could see but he couldn't understand.

And everything was fading.

* * *

"You had really better be kidding me."

"I'm not."

"Santana, you had _really_ better be kidding me."

"For the last time_, _Lips McGee, I'm not." Santana tapped her heel against the floor in rapid beats, her knee bobbing up and down repeatedly as her heeled boots propelled it.

"But he's okay, right?"

"He will be." Santana was really tired of that question being asked and the fact that she could only ever answer in the future tense. She wanted to say yes. God, did she ever want to say yes more than she did now? But she couldn't because he wasn't. All she had was hope he would be.

"That's not what I asked."

"I know what you asked," Santana hissed, "And I know what I answered. No, he's not okay. I don't know how long it will take him to be okay. I don't know how he's going to become okay. But I know that unless God himself pokes his head through the cloud and welcomes him home I will not let him get any worse."

Sam's breath was labored on the other line. "Where's Kurt?"

"On his way. I probably won't be able to convince them to let Blaine come home again this time, though. He'll be stuck here overnight."

"He's going to hate that."

"And he's not going to say anything."

They both knew it was true. Blaine would hate not being able to go home. Blaine would hate the stark-white walls and the silence that reigned in his room, and he would hate that people were worrying about him again, and he would hate that he couldn't just tell people he was fine without lying. He'd hate it all. And he wouldn't say anything. He'd hate that, too. He'd hate his cowardice.

_But he's not cowardly._ Santana sighed, and Rachel looked at her with a semi-supportive, semi-"support me" smile. Santana smiled back and patted her knee reassuringly.

From what Rachel had told her, Blaine had been a wreck. He'd said he wanted to die at least twice, and probably more when Rachel was too focused to hear him, and he'd cried and sobbed and said he was scared and talked like nobody would listen. Those had been Rachel's words: "He talked like he didn't think anybody would listen." Rachel had said she'd never seen him so broken.

Santana loathed herself for understanding more than Rachel did. She loathed herself for having read that journal and knowing why Blaine had broken down. If she'd witnessed it herself she might understand more, but she hadn't. And he loathed herself for that.

But mostly she loathed herself for not answering the damn phone.

He'd called her, and texted her, and she'd sent a few texts back that said she was at work and her phone was about to die and couldn't talk. She'd been worried, but her phone had died shortly - which she didn't discover until they were at the hospital (Santana picked her charger out of her bag and plugged it in) - and she'd assumed that he'd fixed whatever was wrong and was fine.

She was wrong. So very, very wrong

A passage from his journal came flooding back when Sam said, "Yeah, you're right. Not unless you force him."

_Right:_  
_Didn't say anything_

_Wrong:_  
_Didn't say anything_  
_Ignored their questions_  
_Hurt people's feelings_  
_Made Sam angry_  
_Did something to make Tina angry too_  
_Made everyone angry_  
_Why do I make people angry_  
_Stop making people angry_  
_Stop it_  
_You're making yourself angry_  
_CAN'T YOU DO ANYTHING, BLAINE_  
_Stop shouting_  
_Stop crying_  
_God damn it you're supposed to be getting better_  
_Couldn't get better_  
_Cried_  
_Shouted_  
_Cut_  
_Didn't say anything_  
_Didn't say anything_  
_I need to say something_  
_Didn't say anything_

Santana remembered that one page more than the others for some reason. That and the page where he'd first mentioned cutting, which was, thanks to what she'd gleaned in their fight yesterday, when he'd started. This was after that, several pages after, beyond even what Kurt read. The passages did get slightly better over time and he did start marking the days it had been since he last cut. At the end of the journal it had been four and a half weeks.

So two weeks before moving to New York, he'd sliced his skin and watched himself bleed yet again, and he'd felt the horrible sense of relief and that build-up of tension he went on about over and over again in the passages.

Santana had seen Blaine shed a tear maybe twice since knowing him; once was when he had an eye injury, and that wasn't actually crying, just excess tears falling from his injured eye because it was injured, and the second time had been when she'd seen him coming out of the boy's bathroom maybe a week after the break-up and was wiping at his eyes. She was sure Kurt had seen him cry more often than that, but not nearly as often as he put in the journal.

In almost every page _since the Chandler incident_ - yes, that far back - he'd put 'Cried' on the 'Wrong' list.

"Sam?" She hadn't meant to use his actual name, but she was suddenly gad she had - it made it clear that the topic was changed and her seriousness had increased with it, and she heard his breath catch before he asked:

"Yeah?"

"Were you ever mad at Blaine?"

"What, like, _ever_?"

"No, not ever, because I know there have been times when you have been," Santana tried to clarify. "I mean, maybe a month before graduating. Were you and Tina and maybe some others mad at him?"

"Um… no, not really." Sam thought for a moment and she let him. "But now that you mention it, maybe it came off that way. We were having a group discussion about songs and Blaine said we could all choose, and when we asked his opinion he really didn't want to give it, and we kinda pressed him for it. He was our male lead, so it was kinda odd that he didn't want to have his say, but we just assumed he was being nice and so we kept bugging him about it. And then… I think he got upset by it, but he didn't say anything, you know how he is. He said it didn't matter anyway, we wouldn't like his song choices, and that we could go ahead and pick. And so we did, but we were so busy with it and he wasn't trying to be included we ended up ignoring him without meaning to. But no, we weren't mad. Why, did he say something?"

"No," Santana answered the last question, mentally categorizing all the information she'd just been given and making a split-second decision. "At least, not to me. Or anyone else. To himself."

"Did he, like, write it in a diary or something?"

"Yup," Santana answered.

Sam groaned. "You read his diary? He has a diary?"

"It's a journal, really, and it's just lists of things he does right and wrong every day." She looked at Rachel out of the corner of her eye and saw she'd gained the brunette's attention. Good. "And it's… Sam, if I tell you a secret, like, a really, _really_ big secret, do you promise not to tell anyone else?"

Sam thought about it and she let him. "Is it something bad about Blaine?"

"Yes."

"Then don't tell me," Sam decided. "If he wrote it in a private journal and it's really that huge, he doesn't want me to know. So long as he knows that I'm here to listen when he needs to talk about it, I'm good."

"But that's just it, he doesn't know that," Santana said. "He's afraid he'd taking everyone for granted all the time. He doesn't think he's worth the effort of listening to."

"What?" Sam scoffed. "That's crazy."

"No, what's crazy is that he'd cut himself to make himself feel better."

Rachel made a noise similar to that of a cat drowning and clamped a hand over her mouth when everyone looked their direction. Santana loathed herself again. He had told her he didn't want to be told, and it was Blaine's secret to tell… but Sam was, besides Kurt, Blaine's best friend, and even if he was playing football for the University of Kentucky so far away he would still "be there" in a sense. Sam, on the other line, had fallen silent.

"I don't believe you."

"I'm sorry," Santana whispered the words, struck at the fact that she was saying them and that she needed to. Why had she done that? This was major, this was personal, not the kind of thing to do over a phone call, let alone when it wasn't her secret. "I shouldn't have -"

"Where?"

"What?"

"Where did he… because it's not his hips, or his knees, or his wrists, but I've seen all of those when he changed in the locker room during gym. Where?"

"I - I shouldn't -"

"Santana."

"His ankles." That ridiculous fashion sense he had, especially lately with how he'd taken to wearing actual normal pants and his usual high socks, seemed awful to her now. Before it had been unsightly, but now it was just awful in every sense. Underneath those socks - and why would the doctors check there? No wonder they'd let him come home - were dozens of scars, scabs, thick and thin and deep and light, all remains of what he used to do.

"Does… does he still -" That was when she realized Sam was crying and that was when she realized she really should not have done what she did.

"No."

"How… how long since…"

"Five weeks, if we assume the date in the journal was correct."

"So he's… better? He's okay?"

_I really hate that question_. "He will be." _I really hate that answer._

"B-But that's _not_ what I asked!"

"I don't know how to answer what you asked."

"_Then why did you make me ask it_?"

Why had she made him ask it? She didn't know. "I have to go." And she hung up.

"Santana Diabla Lopez!" Rachel whisper-shrieked, punching her shoulder forcefully, and Santana winced when her fist made contact and glared at Rachel.

"Don't hit me," she ordered, her voice low.

"That is not how you should have handled that situation!"

"Do _not_ hit me."

"I won't hit you again, fine!" Rachel slammed her fist down on the chair and made everyone in the room jump and look at them. "But what the hell was that?!"

"The truth."

"A truth that doesn't belong to you!" Rachel was crying, too, Santana realized with a jolt. It wasn't the first time she'd seen it happen, but Berry didn't usually cry so angrily, did she? She gave over to the dejection and didn't fight back. But she was fighting back now. "You're not supposed to tell truths that belong to other people. That was Blaine's truth, Blaine's secret, and Blaine's _friend_ you told it to over the phone. That's _not_ okay!"

"I know."

"Then why did you do it?"

Santana looked her square in the eyes and watched her shrink back. "I don't know."


	6. Part 6

There had been a time when being with Blaine was the best thing ever.

For example, prom didn't go too well. Not the senior prom, but the junior prom, where he'd been crowned queen. Going home that night, Blaine had driven him, and Kurt had been unable to shake the unhappiness. He'd turned the night into a success and Blaine's gallant display of affection that led to them dancing together was beyond brave and touching and Kurt could not have been more grateful for that, but…

Blaine kissed him good-night and asked if he wanted him to stay, or if he wanted to stay over. But Kurt knew his parents were home that night, and he really just wanted some time to reassure his dad he was fine, so he told Blaine to go home. Burt thanked Blaine for being responsible with his son when Kurt opened the door and announced his presence, and then Blaine left.

But Blaine had, of course, known he was unhappy. And so the next night, after Kurt had sat in bed with chocolate and an old movie marathon all day, texting Blaine random lyrics from songs he listened to in the musicals, at around eight, Blaine texted him to open the door.

Kurt had gone downstairs and done so and there was Blaine, dressed in his tuxedo, holding a guitar case and a box and beaming at him. Kurt had asked him what was going on and Blaine had responded only that he should put on his prom clothes and wait in his room.

So Kurt did. He changed slowly and carefully and brushed his hair again and washed his face and hands and then sat on his bed, barely sitting still because of his excitement. When Blaine knocked on his bedroom door, his eyes were excited and his smile was impossibly wider, and Kurt wondered what the hell was going on but said nothing; he trusted Blaine completely, and this was obviously a good surprise.

Nothing prepared him for the sight of the backyard. Twinkling lights had been strung up around the trees and the old swing set, and in the dwindling twilight it had seemed like the faint breeze making the small, plastic lanterns dance carried away everything, even his shock, and left him standing bare and raw and completely in love with Blaine. But that wasn't all; Blaine had taken his hand, his fingers so warm in his own, and led him over to the swing set, where he told Kurt to sat down. And then he pulled out a guitar and began to play.

It was soft and it was gentle and it was a song Kurt knew but couldn't remember exactly and it was perfect. It was like a lullaby, but instead of lulling him to sleep it only stirred his awareness further, and he had never been more certain that he really, truly loved Blaine. And then, miraculously, he'd finished and helped Kurt back to his feet and started to dance slowly, their limbs moving in time to the other's, Blaine's lips finding his neck and murmuring sweet sentiments as he kissed lightly below his jawline. Kurt, in turn, had thanked him and begun listing all the things he'd done right since they'd known each other and rewarding him with a brief kiss after each one.

It was with horror now that Kurt realized his listing those things were probably something that strongly influenced his journal, and it was with even more horror that he realized he was still holding the journal in his hands.

He'd hidden it in his bag all day for fear Rachel might find it at the apartment and change her mind and take it back, and/or tell him it was there. Blaine had had no idea when they'd spoken in the halls, and they'd discussed classes and his head and whether or not he was okay. He hadn't answered the last question because he had to get to class, though Kurt suspected it was honestly because he didn't want Kurt to know the answer.

"We're here," the man said gruffly, and Kurt handed him the cash he owed and stepped out. The journal was in his grasp, his bag slung over his shoulder, and he hurried through the hospital doors.

Santana was looking at her feet, her face contorted into an emotion he wasn't sure was real, her hands clasped over her knee which rested on top of the other. Rachel sat tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair and changing her pose every couple of seconds along with her facial expression. Both girls avidly avoided looking at each other - but when he came in they looked up and their stares became identical, worried, anxious and grief-stricken.

"How is he?" Kurt demanded, flopping down into the seat they had between them, forcing them to look at least somewhat at each other if they wanted to keep looking at him.

"He should be coming out soon," Rachel answered before Santana had a chance. "A doctor came out a little while ago to say they were re-doing the stitches and that he'd be out quickly."

"So he can come home?" This was far better than he'd hoped.

Rachel nodded.

"Oh, good," Kurt heaved a deep breath, feeling a tiny but of the anxiety lift. "How bad is it?"

"They relocated his shoulder," Santana said, cutting off Rachel, who had opened her mouth and shut it again with a snap. "They had to re-do the stitches, his concussion is worse, he's got a black eye and a busted lip but nothing too major, and lost way too much blood."

Kurt shook his head free of the images that had started forming… Blaine pale, Blaine dying… "Is that all?"

"He also shocked some of his nerves," Rachel rushed out before Santana, and Kurt wondered, not for the first time, exactly what had happened between them. "When he landed he did it in a way that jabbed his spine with so much force it kind of stilled the movement in his lower body. They had a better way of telling it, but that's the basics of it. He should be back to normal by tomorrow… at least _that_ way." She bit her lip, a Rachel Berry trademark quirk she didn't seem to notice she did so often.

Kurt took a deep breath. "None of this sounds like it's possible."

"The doctors said it's rare that someone gets by so lucky when something like this happens," Santana deadpanned, and then rolled her eyes and huffed. "Bastards." She eyed the book in his hands without speaking and met his eyes. "How far?"

"I have thirty-two pages left that are written on."

"I don't think you should read that, Kurt." It was Rachel this time, and she wasn't even looking at him, she was looking at the journal. "You might be tempted to tell people its contents, people who, no matter how much we love them, shouldn't be told until Blaine does it himself."

"I didn't mean to!" Santana burst out, and all the stares flew towards them. "I was being cynical, it's what I do. It was a _reflex_."

"A reflex to tell Sam about something in Blaine's personal journal?" Rachel demanded, and Kurt had the vague idea that this had been what their fight had been about. And it was unresolved.

"What did you tell Sam?" Kurt asked, turning to look at Santana.

"She told him Blaine cuts," Rachel whispered darkly.

Kurt's very blood stopped running and froze through at hearing the words out loud. How did Rachel know? Oh, she must have overheard Santana say it. But why had Santana said it? And to _Sam_, of all people? _Over the phone?_ And suddenly his blood was rushing through him and burning hot and he saw red, the betrayal on Blaine's part angering him far past the amount of anger he had a right to have.

He said nothing. He sat there and stewed in his fury while they waited for a reaction. He had calmed himself by the time his vision became normal again, and said simply, "She shouldn't have, but we'll see what Blaine has to say about it before I judge." _I'm judging you seven ways to Sunday, Satan_, he thought towards her, but he didn't say it aloud.

Santana nodded, taking in his reaction and shooting him a grateful and somewhat cocky smile. "Thank you, Hummel."

"Shut it, Santana," Rachel snapped, and Santana raised her eyebrows, a retort just beginning to roll off her tongue, when a voice interrupted them.

"Friends of Blaine Anderson?"

"Us!" Kurt nearly squealed, sitting up as straight as a flagpole, looking eagerly at the doctor. "Where is he? _How_ is he?"

The doctor smiled kindly; this was not the same one as before, he was certain. "He's doing great for someone in his situation," she said, her voice warm though methodical. "We have him in a wheelchair for now so he doesn't strain his legs trying to walk through the stun, but he should be able to walk normally by this time tomorrow. It wasn't a bad stun at all. He's rather lucky to have fallen so well, especially in his current state." There was that word again: Lucky. Kurt sure as hell didn't feel lucky. "His shoulder is patched up nicely and the stitching shouldn't come undone this time, considering that now it's under a bandage. He shouldn't move his shoulder," the doctor told them seriously. "So no school for him for a couple days, at least until the concussion begins to subside. It wasn't too bad of one before but this made it worse, so it may be a while before he can go to class."

"He's going to get so behind," Rachel muttered. They ignored her.

"He is able to come home tonight," the doctor awarded them with the news, though they already knew it; regardless, Santana took a breath as though it were her first clean one in years, and Kurt felt the same way. The doctor smiled. "They told me his roommate would fight like the damned if he couldn't, but she won't have to."

"And they were right," Santana said, sitting back in the chair, her normalcy returning, becoming the Santana they knew and loved again. "It's a good thing, too."

"I assume you're the roommate?" the doctor asked her.

"You assume correctly," Santana confirmed.

"Then you'll be the one signing these forms," the doctor said, and beckoned her aside to explain to her.

"You can't honestly mean to say you're okay with her telling Sam… and me, I guess," Rachel intoned.

"No, I'm not, not at all." Kurt wasn't going to lie. "But I'm going to let Blaine decide how to react before I do."

Rachel was about to prattle on about how she was right, he could tell, so he opened the journal and began to read, despite her disapproving grunt.

He picked up where he left off, steeling himself against what he was sure would be even more horrible. He'd stopped reading early into the morning and the lack of sleep was getting to him, but he couldn't really make himself care. He was frazzled and tired and emotionally wrung out but he needed to read it. At this point he really didn't care if Blaine saw.

_Right:_  
_Woke up_  
_Finished homework_  
_Didn't ignore people_  
_Ate ALL of lunch_  
_Helped Marley eat HER lunch_  
_Helped Unique get away from bullies_  
_Stopped a fight between Ryder and Jake_  
_Got Mr. Schue to admit he missed Finn_  
_Convinced Sam that Santana is a good person_  
_Finally met Lord Tubbington_  
_Helped Brittany get grades up_  
_Sent Rachel a song list for her audition like she asked_  
_Didn't tell Kurt what was wrong_

_Wrong:_  
_Woke up_  
_Barely finished homework on time/probably failed_  
_Couldn't block out mean people_  
_Ate so much lunch I felt sick_  
_Felt like a hypocrite helping Marley eat_  
_Threatened the bullies messing with Unique_  
_Accidentally shoved Jake away from Ryder too hard_  
_Pestered Mr. Schue_  
_Didn't let go of the Santana thing with Sam_  
_Scared away Lord Tubbington_  
_Got frustrated at Brittany when it wasn't her fault_  
_Took too long replying to Rachel's e-mail_  
_Talked to Kurt_  
_Didn't tell Kurt what was wrong_  
_Refused to admit something is still wrong_  
_Didn't understand what was wrong_  
_Couldn't figure out what was wrong_  
_Something is wrong_  
_Something is very wrong_  
_I want to fix it but I don't know how_  
_I'm scared I'm scared_  
_Stop talking to yourself there's nothing to be scared of_  
_You're scared of yourself_  
_There's nothing to be scared of_  
_Stop talking to yourself_  
_You're a freak_  
_Stop crying_  
_Stop_  
_Stop_  
_Wrong_  
_Wrong_  
_Wrong_  
_Stop crying_  
_Didn't stop crying_  
_Didn't text Kurt back for an hour and a half_  
_Cut again_  
_I thought I was getting better?_  
_Got worse_  
_I'm sorry_  
_STOP_

The 'Right' list was longer than he'd ever seen it, but everything put on it was contradicted below, and Kurt knew that the wrongs meant more to Blaine than the rights. Kurt shook his head, making the tears that dangled on his eyelashes spray off, and he blinked ferociously. It took so little to set him off these days.

Kurt wondered when Blaine had ever cried so much. He put that he cried on nearly ever page since around the time Chandler happened and Kurt wondered if he actually cried or if he deluded himself into thinking he was crying or shouting at himself and in actuality just sat there having a war over realities in his head. The thought was more disturbing than he liked. And with good reason.

Kurt closed the book just as the door swung open. Stuffing it into his bag quickly, he saw legs wearing familiar shoes and pants be wheeled out, and just as Blaine's head rounded the corner, Kurt hitched the bag over his shoulder and leapt to his feet.

* * *

Blaine wouldn't even look at Kurt.

The entire ride home, the whole time Kurt had tried talking to him in the lobby, when Kurt and Rachel had bid them goodbye in the cab, Blaine hadn't spoken a word to Kurt and scarcely a word to anyone else, either, and hadn't even raised his head to meet Kurt's confused eyes. If he had, perhaps he'd have felt guilty; Kurt was hurt and confused and nervous about the blatant ignoring of himself and Santana wanted to know what caused it.

Of course, she wanted to know a lot of things, so when she wheeled Blaine into their apartment, the first thing she did was say, "What happened?"

Blaine looked at her - glanced, really - before hanging his head again. "You know what happened."

"Not that," Santana said, closing the door, "I mean what happened to make you have such a meltdown?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Blaine said, raising his chin just a little. "I was injured, it's normal to cry when injured."

"Anderson, I'm not going to fight about this, and you're not -"

"Not what?" he cut across her, meeting her eyes again, this time not looking away, his jaw set and his golden-flecked orbs flashes dangerously. "Not up to fighting? I can fight. And why wouldn't you fight? I know it doesn't go against your moral code or whatever. I know you like it. But why wouldn't you?" He raised his eyebrows. "Because ever since you read my journal you're not treating me like you used to."

"That's not true," Santana denied.

"This would be why I didn't tell anyone, or did you not think of that?" Blaine threw at her, his tone cutting, vicious, and she really was getting angry, her pulse quickening and color flooding to her cheeks. "Because I'm still the same person I was, it's just that you didn't know the person I was, and now that you do you're not acting the same towards me."

"That's not why I'm treating you differently!"

"THEN WHY?!" Blaine was past all reason and Santana didn't need to even rile him up; for someone who had stayed so quiet during the journey here he was remarkably vocal now. "WHY ARE YOU BEING SO _NICE_ TO ME?!"

"Because you're my family and I have love for you, despite your horrible fashion choices and ugly gelling tendencies and perpetual cheeriness."

"See?" Blaine pointed to her. "There's Santana. Making fun of me. That's fine, you do that. But don't baby me or ask me what I need or -"

"So don't take care of you?" Santana cocked her head to the side and crossed her arms.

"I don't need anyone to take care of me!" But it was without any conviction that the words were loosed, and the finger pointing to her shook.

"Obviously you do, Gel Head, or you wouldn't have called Kurt's phone," Santana dug her heels into the floor, rocking back and then forward. "You just don't want anyone to. And you know what? I can get behind that. I can understand not wanting help, but that doesn't mean you don't need it."

"Don't start."

"We can't just say 'don't start' every time a topic you don't want to talk about comes up," Santana spit out the words as if venomous, and Blaine reacted like they were.

"And why not?"

"Because if we do that nothing will ever get discussed." They both knew she was right.

"Nothing needs to be discussed." His tone was authoritative, but Santana had a basic disregard for authority she'd acquired long ago that burst out at the words.

"Something does. A lot of things do, actually."

"No."

"Yes."

"No, Santana." His face seemed made of steel for all the emotion it showed. "I'm not -"

"You just said you were up to fighting," Santana pointed out.

"Well I -"

"You deserve help, Blaine."

That pulled him up short, and Santana knew why. The whole concept of his deserving things that weren't bad was foreign and unbelievably to him; besides Kurt, who had ever told him what she just had? And not even Kurt would say that anymore because of what Blaine had done when Kurt had been too busy to do so.

Blaine was a sad, sad boy. Not a man, not a child, but a boy. Someone old enough to understand the tragedies of the world but not mature enough to understand that not all of them were caused by something interior to their lives. No matter what happened, be it getting a bad grade because of a prejudiced teacher or simply getting food poisoning, it was always going to be his fault in his head. A boy.

And he did deserve help. He deserved help more than she did because he gave it out so often and so freely. And then there were times like today when it seemed impossible, and he'd just either shut down or break down. He'd broken down earlier and he was doing the opposite now and it broke her heart just a little to know that he was shredding himself inside.

"Why?"

It was a simple question, but it was all the more painful because of that. Why did he deserve help? Why? What had he ever done to deserve it? What good had he brought or done that entitled him to the care of and from others? And he didn't mean it to contest what she said, he meant it as an honest question. He really didn't know.

But at least he _wanted_ to know. That was something.

"Because you're good."

Santana had the feeling he'd heard it before, maybe in a different context, because the sigh that followed the words was tired, but not physically.

"No, I mean it," she pressed. "No matter how irritating you are, you're only irritating because I'm a bitch and you're a decent human being."

"You're not a bitch," Blaine frowned, immediately taking up the defensive.

_He can defend me but not himself._

"Hell yes I am," she argued fervently. "And I like being a bitch, it's fine. Which is why you being so decent all the time is irritating. You love everybody until they give you a reason not to and after that you keep giving them second chances. You're forgiving, and honest - almost too honest - and you love everyone so_ much_." Jealousy colored her voice at the end.

Blaine eyed her critically. "You do too, Santana."

Santana grimaced. "I love very few people with as much intensity as you love everyone," Santana corrected. "And you know, that's alright. That's how and who I am."

"And this is how I am," Blaine said, spreading his arms. "And I am fine."

"Blaine."

"I get so uncomfortable when you call me that," Blaine joked lightly; she didn't laugh.

"I'm serious," she told him. "You're a good person. Why is that so hard to believe? What is it about your head that twists every good thing that happens into something bad?"

"What is it about everyone else that has them convinced that the bad things I do are acceptable?" Blaine defied.

Santana didn't know where it came from and how risky it was, especially considering Kurt had his journal, but she said, "I'll prove it to you that you're wrong about yourself."

"How?"

"We're going to make lists," she answered. "We're going to go through all the good and bad things we've done today and we're going to write it down, and we're going to do it with each other." She turned on her heel and marched toward the printer they had hooked up on the wall, and took a sheet out of it. "On one side we'll do mine," she explained, and turned back to face him, seeing his eyes lock on the paper. "And on the other we'll do yours. Me first."

Santana nearly jogged back over to him, her skin nearly jumping off of her with uncertainty. What was she doing? Would this even work? What if it didn't? But Blaine seemed willing enough, even if he wasn't entirely sold on the idea and possibly more than a little mortified.

Shoving aside her doubts, she wheeled him to the table and sat down in the chair beside him, placing the paper down and picking up one of the four spilled pens from their tipped pencil mug. "Okay," she said, "To start off, do you want to do wrongs or rights?"

"Rights," Blaine answered automatically. "I always start with rights."

"I noticed." He flinched. "Sorry."

"It's fine," but he didn't mean it and they could both tell.

"Okay," she repeated."How about we just go through things we did today and say whether they're bad or good, instead?"

"Works for me."

"Good." She took a deep breath. "To start off, the first thing I did this morning was answer Puck's call."

"Right," Blaine declared.

"Why?"

He seemed taken aback. "Because you responded to someone who's important to you?"

"Good enough," she said, and wrote _Answered Puck's call_ on the 'right' side. "He wanted to know how you were doing, by the way. I said you were okay. We should probably call him later and tell him…"

"Something tells me he already knows," Blaine commented dryly. "Go on."

And on they went, analyzing all the little details of her day and deciding whether they were right or wrong. Blaine seemed reluctant to put anything in the 'wrong' category when it came to her, and while that was touching, it was also worrisome; those who can admit to no fault in others can admit to no justice in themselves. Santana told Blaine about how she forced a rude customer to leave the store and how her boss high-fived her afterwards and Blaine laughed and told her to put it on both lists because despite the fact that she was in the right she was really rude about accomplishing the feat, and so she did. And when they got to her not answering her phone, Santana didn't bother asking his opinion before writing it on the 'wrong' list, and continued before he could speak.

Over all, her list was pretty even. Santana liked that. There were a few things Blaine had argued for that she couldn't argue against that she was unhappy with, but aside from that it was nice to see that she was such a balanced human being. It was a nice reminder and she liked it and that massively annoying warm feeling spread through her again. She didn't often get it and when she used it to was because her family had done something truly stupendous for her. _Familial love_, she scoffed at herself in her head, _how weakening_. But she'd never felt stronger.

And then they got to his list.

The first thing he said was, "Woke up. Both."

Santana looked at him silently, long enough for him to bring his eyes from the paper to her, and then murmured, "Right." She wrote it down on the first list and watched him purse his lips. "Because if you hadn't woken up we wouldn't have a list to make."

He nodded once, the movement miniscule, and then continued. "Missed breakfast."

"Wrong," Santana supplied for him. "Most important meal of the day. I'll make it for you tomorrow, how's that?"

"You don't have to…"

"If I don't, will you make it yourself?"

Blaine looked at her sheepishly. "Probably not."

"So yes, yes I do," she finalized. "Alright, next?"

"Took my meds."

That was when Santana twitched in her spot. "Without food?"

"Yeah." Blaine looked even more sheepish. "I know it's not what I should have done, but I was running late."

Santana studied him for a while longer, not remarking on his excuse, not telling him that his professor would have understood given the circumstances, not saying anything, just letting her eyes roam around him and take in everything they could. "Alright. Taking your meds goes on both, then."

"Oh." His shoulders slumped. "I thought I did that right."

"You did," she told him, "But you also did it wrong because you didn't eat before you took them. It's unhealthy. You need something to help digest it with."

Blaine nodded but she was pretty sure he didn't care. "Okay. And then I went to class."

"Right," Santana said as the wrote it under that category. "Next?"

"I took notes?"

"Right. Next?"

"I asked Kurt if he wanted to grab lunch."

"Right. Next?"

"I was disappointed when he said he was busy."

"Right. N-"

"How was that right?"

Santana turned to him, her eyebrows lifted in surprise. "How was it wrong?"

"It's not my place to be disappointed when Kurt's got something planned," Blaine explained. "I'm only inconveniencing him by asking and getting out of line by not liking the response."

_Oh my god, he actually thinks this is true._ "You went after something you wanted and accepted his response politely without any outward display of being let down," she rephrased. "If there's any reason it's wrong it's because you didn't keep going after it."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"And that -" she pointed to him to emphasize her point, "- is what's wrong. But that's his doing, not yours. Being disappointed is just feeling something bad about someone else, Blaine. It happens and it's not your fault."

"It's not my fault?"

"It's not your fault," she said again, and for the first time since maybe she'd met him, his eyes lit up with a tinge of a type of hope she'd not seen in him before. "Next?"

"I ate lunch."

"All of it?"

"Yes."

"Did you feel sick?"

"No."

"Right. Next?"

He actually grinned before sobering and continuing; she missed the grin as soon as it was gone. "I went back to class."

"Right. Next?"

"I came home when my classes were finished."

"Right. Next?"

"I went to take my medicine."

"Right. Next?"

He paused and her stomach twisted sickeningly when that hope flickered out of him. "I… fell."

"Neither."

"Neither?" He looked at her in total bewilderment. "Is that even possible?"

Was he so far gone that he believed that? She wished she could tell herself no. "Not everything falls into a category of either 'wrong' or 'right'. Sometimes things just _are_."

"Oh." He sat back in his wheelchair, and he seemed to be staring into a voice where things just _were_ for a moment before snapping back to reality. "Okay. Next I called you."

Santana sighed. "Right. I'm just going to put 'Tried to get help' under right and leave it at that, okay?"

"Why is it right?"

"I said it once and I'll say it again and next time I'll draw you a picture," she teased. "You deserve help, Blaine."

It struck him much as it did the first time, and much like the first time she found herself wondering just how long he'd had to go without the help he so needed. "Right. Okay. Um, and then I kind of… fell apart when Rachel picked up."

Santana set down the pen and turned the face him, face-to-face, her shoulder square and her demeanor somber. "Can you tell me why?"

"I, um…" he gulped. "I was hurt… and helpless… and I didn't think anyone would find me until you came home and that could have been hours. And I didn't want you to have to find me like that because you would have been really scared and for no good reason because I'm not worth getting scared over -" It took a lot of restraint to hold back interrupting him, "- and then Rachel was coming and she was scared and I couldn't move or answer her questions and I was scared and everything was scary and -"

"Take a breath," she commanded gently, and he did, cutting off his words and inhaling a huge gasp of air.

And then he plunged forward as if he hadn't even needed to breath, growing steadily more upset as he did so. His hands began to shake as he gestured with them, he flinched in pain every time he moved his shoulder, and the worst part was that tears began welling in his dulling eyes. Santana recalled the experience later as if she were being electrocuted, because she'd just found out that Blaine cried a lot but hadn't known because he hid it, and he was finally showing her he trusted her enough to do it in front of her. Either that, or it hurt so badly he couldn't hide. Both were equally grievous. "And then she got here and I couldn't help her and she kept telling me to be quiet but I couldn't because I don't know why, and then when I did get quiet it was because everything was disappearing, and then I thought about Kurt disappearing and I… I-I could… c-couldn't m-make myself…"

"Shh, honey," Santana tried to say, but her voice broke right before the petname. She slid off her chair and took Blaine's hands in hers and held them. As soon as her fingers grazed over his skin, the first tear loosed its way from his eyes and fell with a tiny, flattening splash onto his cheek, where it rolled down, glinting in the light. "It's all going to be okay."

He hiccuped and squeezed her hands tightly, keeping his grip for much longer than she though he would. "N-No…"

"You are brave," she told him, before she could stop herself. "You are brave, I swear."

"I'm… I-I'm…" He hiccuped again and another tear fell, and this time he dropped his head so his chin rested against his neck and his shoulders shook.

"You are brave," she repeated, "and you are okay."

"N-No I'm n-not." She'd never head him try to speak when crying before, but the effect was something like he was being drowned.

"You will be, then." She was sure of it - okay, so maybe she wasn't, but she'd make herself sure of it. "You will be as okay as you are nice, and caring, and strong, and talented, and skilled, and hard-working, and determined, and brave."

"I'm n-not brave, though," he choked, and she could see that he had shut his eyes so tightly his entire face wrinkled with his eyelids, and yet the tears didn't stop coming. "I'm n-not brave."

"You are _so_ brave." It was one of the most truthful things she'd ever said. "You're not cowardly. You're not fearless. You are considerate and you put other people before yourself all the time, but you're brave. You're the bravest person I have ever met."

"B-But… I-I wouldn't… I can't…"

"You don't have to do anything right now except believe me."

And something shifted. The air, so still around them, became just the tiniest bit more occupied, filled with something had been missing - and that same something, undefinable in any language and by any person but known by almost all, was there in his face when he looked up. Not just his face, but all of him: He thrummed with the energy, he moved with it even staying still, and his sobs were inclusive of a feeling almost like being happy. "I'll be okay?"

"Yes," she giggled tearfully, her soft laughter riddled with the same kind of cries he let go now. "Yes, I promise. Yes."

* * *

The knock on the door made Blaine jump. Santana was at work and took her keys, so it was either Kurt, Rachel, or someone completely random or lost. He'd been awakened that morning by Santana making him breakfast. Eggs and waffles, and they'd eaten them together, which was the first time in days that they'd shared a meal. It was nice. Santana was as blunt and Santana-esque as usual, but she chose her words specifically to make sure what she said couldn't possibly be construed into something negative. But even that couldn't last; she'd taken off right before noon, because she had a waiting shift before her shift as bartender, and he was left alone again.

It was a good kind of alone, a thin kind that seemed both heavy and light, but now it was being interrupted.

He stood and walked to the door, peering out the peephole. He didn't see anything - but then, he had to stretch to see through it. It was really high up and it was _not_ his fault he was so short. But nonetheless he sighed and opened it, looking to see who it was.

"Hi!" Kurt said brightly, shouldering a huge bag. "How are you?"

"Kurt," Blaine greeted, "What are you doing here?"

"Classes are over," Kurt said, pointing at a clock. Blaine knew he was right, he'd seen the time when walking to the door, but that wasn't the only objection to Kurt's being there.

"Don't you have to go to work?" Blaine asked. "It's Tuesday."

"Isabelle gave me the next three days off," Kurt smiled at him. "I was already ahead of where I needed to be in my workload and I'm not going to be behind at all until Friday, so I'm off to take care of you."

"Take care of me?"

"Yes," Kurt drew the word out slowly. "Take care of you. You know, you? The one with a concussion bad enough to keep him house-ridden?"

"Oh," Blaine murmured. "Right. Sorry, I keep forgetting about that stuff."

"What stuff?" Kurt asked, momentarily distracted.

"Oh, just…" Blaine struggled to find the words for it. "Good… stuff… I guess." He shook his head. "Sorry, that was really not descriptive at all. Did you want to come in?" He stepped to the side and gestured with one arm for Kurt to enter.

"Yes, thank you," Kurt replied, stepping inside gracefully and allowing Blaine to close the door behind him. "I brought entertainment. Popcorn, old but timeless musicals, and some of our old Warblers tapes." He set his bag down on the chair and began digging through it, looking for the items he listed.

"Our old Warblers tapes?"

"Mm," Kurt confirmed, glancing up to smile at Blaine and only smiling wider when he noticed the grin the other boy was fighting. "I found the videos of your first 'Teenage Dream' that the other boys had taken and posted on youtube, too, if you got tired of the television and wanted some good old internet."

"What songs did you find taped?" Blaine asked, moving further into the apartment, which already seemed livelier with Kurt inside it.

"Almost all from the time I transferred to Dalton to when I transferred back," Kurt answered him, rummaging in the bag some more and then pulling out several DVD cases. Some were official, with covers and titles, and others were just little CD holders with words written on them. "Do you want to watch these, or something else? Or both? We could work our way through them over the next three days, if you'd like I'm okay with that. What do you want to do?"

Blaine was lost. Totally, hopelessly lost. Kurt's voice hadn't stopped making his head spin, and not in a way that scared him; Kurt's eyes were vivacious today, bright and cheery, and his beaming at Blaine didn't help matters. Not to mention that his pants were ridiculously tight again, and his shirt-and-vest combination clung to the contours of his figure, slimming, and his presence seemed to command the room. It certainly commanded Blaine.

"Blaine?"

"Hm? Sorry," Blaine said, raising a hand to his forehead automatically. "I kind got lost. Say it again?"

Kurt smirked, but his eyes grew concern. "Have you taken your medication?"

"Yes, I did, " Blaine said, gesturing to the bottle of pills sitting on the nightstand. "I'm just waiting for them to take effect. I was a little late, but I did take them."

Kurt rolled his eyes fondly. "You're a ditz, Blaine Warbler."

That old nickname gripped his lungs so tightly he felt all the air rush out of his chest. "Yeah, a ditz."

"So," Kurt said, turning back to the bag. "We could watch the musicals, or watch our own oldies. We need to make the popcorn ourselves, it's not microwave, much cheaper -" and it was a tradition they had that they'd been forced to break last year when Kurt was in New York and Blaine wasn't, and Blaine felt his lips spread widely at the mention of it "- and we could look up Warbler videos on youtube."

"We could sing," Blaine suggested. "I haven't had a chance to really sing since last week."

Kurt's eyes nearly bulged out of his head. "Last _week_?!" he squeaked. "That is _unacceptable_!"

"My guitar's in my room," Blaine said, pointing. "My violin and keyboard are in my closet. Did you want to sing something already written, or…"

"What else would we sing?" Kurt asked, confused, when Blaine trailed off.

"Well, it's… I've written a song or two myself," he said, and Kurt's face rearranged itself to look casual and respectful but he could see the excitement crinkling the corners of his eyes, "but then I've also re-written lyrics to a couple songs to fit my situation. I was -"

"Sing, sing sing sing," Kurt demanded, pointing and nearly jumping up and down. "Sing anything. Your own song, if you want. Or wait! One I know. Wait, no, a mix of the two. The last option."

Blaine heard the last part and chuckled, because by then he was emerging from the small curtained-off area that served as his room while carrying the guitar he'd spoken of. "You know this, but I re-wrote the lyrics," he said, not bothering to introduce it. It was a song everyone knew, really, but nobody knew this version.

Kurt waited impatiently for him to begin and Blaine felt the air take on a new form. It was odd, but it was pleasant, and it helped his fingers strum the chords. Kurt's brow furrowed instantly; he recognized it, of course he did, but he couldn't place it. He'd forgotten what song it was. Blaine chuckled and Kurt mock-glared."

"_Hey there Kurt Hummel, what's it like it New York city?_" Blaine sang, and Kurt clamped a hand over his mouth, riddled with excitement. Blaine absolutely loved seeing him so joyful; his anticipation for something good always brought out an adorable happiness in him and it was not only contagious but seemed to last for hours. "_I'm a thousand miles away, but boy, tonight you look so pretty, yes you do_."

Kurt started dancing in place and Blaine had to remind himself not to stare. _You have no right to stare anymore. _The thought was sobering and Blaine's smile slipped. Kurt noticed. Blaine brought the smile back. Kurt didn't believe it.

"_Times Square can't shine as bright as you, I swear it's true_," Blaine told him, and the words were honest.

"_Hey there Kurt Hummel, don't you worry about the distance;_  
_I'm right here if you get lonely, give this song another listen -_  
_close your eyes. Listen to my voice, it's my disguise._  
_I'm by your side_."

Kurt swayed back and forth and Blaine almost forgot the chorus - but then he remembered, and even if it was a little late, neither of them cared. Blaine had seen Kurt look at him like that more times than he'd ever expected to, and he was wrenched in his very core because Kurt was looking at him like he loved him.

"_Oh, it's what you do to me!_"

Not with contempt, not with hatred.

"_Oh, it's what you do to me._"

Not with anything he'd come to expect after the break-up.

"_Oh, it's what you do to me!_"

In fact, his eyes were almost glittering now, the lights dancing in the sheen of liquid that covered the blue already deep enough to have been saltwater itself.

"_Oh, it's what you do to me_."

And his lips were frowning now, but there was laughter playing at the edges. Blaine's whole body felt like it was thrumming, and maybe it was the music and song that he was causing and maybe it was Kurt, but whatever it was he wanted more and had been deprived of it for far too long.

_"What you do to me."_

Kurt shook his head just softly enough for Blaine to remember that _No, he doesn't love me anymore. Not like that._

_"Hey there Kurt Hummel, I know sometimes it gets hard,  
but believe me, I will love you no matter how far apart  
we get for good; we'll have the life we knew we would,  
my heart is good."  
_

Kurt shook his head again and this time the laughter became more prominent in his face; but so did the tears, and that had Blaine confused. He'd been so excited just moments ago - well, a minute and a half really - but now he was standing there, as still and rigid as a statue, not to mention just as handsome, his entirety giving off so many different signs Blaine didn't know how to read him.

Knowing what the next verse was, Blaine almost stopped singing; but then he also decided that no, he had to go on, but he almost went back to the original verse just to avoid the lyrics change he made. It was no longer relevant or even possible, what he'd re-written, but no, Kurt had wanted this. Right?

"_Hey there Kurt Hummel, I've got so much left to say._  
_If every single kiss I shared with you would take your breath away_  
_I'd do it all. Even more in love with me you'd fall -_  
_We'll have it all._"

Kurt's hands were shaking. He wasn't okay. Kurt wasn't okay, why wasn't Kurt okay?

Blaine's fingers fell from the guitar and he placed it on the ground beside him, holding it up loosely with his palm. "Kurt?"

"Why did you stop?"

And now his voice was shaking, too. What had he done? He hadn't meant to, he really hadn't meant to upset him. How had he upset him? Was it the words? It was the words, wasn't it? He knew he should have stuck with something else. This was old and moot by now and only brought up bad memories. "Because you're upset."

"No, Blaine," and Kurt shook his head again. "I'm happy."

"But you look sad."

"It's a sad kind of happy," was the only response he got.


	7. Part 7

"Santana?"

"Mm?"

"What's the thing you're scared of most?"

Santana looked over at Blaine, sitting on the couch, staring absently into space but asking questions suited better to being truly present in thought. "Why?" She stopped slicing the carrots - Blaine offered, but she didn't want him around knives with his concussion - and laid the knife down, turning to face him.

"I just want to know, so I never accidentally make fun of you for it," Blaine explained, and he snapped back into the room mentally - it was obvious by how his entire body shifted just a tiny bit and he really looked at her.

Santana paused. She really didn't want to tell him; but then, she knew if she did he'd tell her his, and she wanted to know. His reason was valid and innocent and she was sure he wouldn't tell anyone or use it as blackmail - he just wasn't the type of person - but your greatest fear is something that not everybody is okay with telling. And Santana hadn't told anybody hers except Brittany… not that that mattered now…

Ah, what the hell.

"I'm scared that my grandmother will die before she loves me again."

The moment the words were out she regretted saying them, but Blaine just nodded seriously.

She waited, wanting to know what his response would be. He seemed to consider it himself, until she figured out he was just trying to solve a problem in his head - he looked hopelessly confused. "But… it's homophobia, right? That's why she doesn't love you?"

Santana wanted to hit him very, very hard. "Yes."

"Oh." Blaine relaxed. "Okay."

"Why?"

"I couldn't figure out why your own grandmother would hate someone like you," Blaine told her, batting his eyelashes without meaning to, and the urge to hit him vanished.

"Oh." Santana wished she were better at this type of thing. She wasn't and she despised the fact; if she were as good at this as Brittany, with everyone, with anybody else but Brittany, she'd be so much more effective comforting people. "What's yours?"

"I… hm." Blaine began and then stopped, the words falling back into his mouth as he weighed his options. "I think - no, it's definitely Kurt never loving me again."

That wasn't exactly a surprise, but at the same time it was. Both of their fears were about someone important to them not loving them for as long as they stayed alive, and though Santana suspected it had to do with Kurt, she didn't think it would be his biggest fear. Was he really so scare that he'd messed up so badly? "What was the other thing you were thinking about?"

"Never being a part of the Hudson-Hummels," Blaine admitted. "Kind of the same thing, really, but Kurt's family is more a family to me than my own, and if I'm never a part of it my life will have kind of sucked."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." His life really did revolve around Kurt. Santana wondered when, exactly, he'd found a purpose; he wasn't in love with Kurt because Kurt gave him purpose, he was in love with Kurt because he fell in love with every single part of the boy, and purpose happened to be included. But until he'd met Kurt, he must have been thinking everything pointless, especially if his life adjusted to be '_our_ life' with Kurt so quickly. "I'm glad you told me."

"I'm glad _you_ told _me_," Blaine said in response, giving her a small smile. "I thought maybe you'd run me over with a bus before you admitted you were scared of something more than anything else in the world."

"Just don't ask too much about Brittany and I'll try not to steal a bus," Santana bartered, and Blaine laughed.

* * *

When Kurt got home that evening, Rachel was sitting on the couch, her cell phone in her hand - but it wasn't ringing, and nobody was talking through it, and she had it tilted so she couldn't have possibly been reading a text. The door creaked as it slid shut and the key latch snapped a soft sound gently into the air. "Hey," he said. "What's up?"

"What are you scared of?" she asked suddenly, her back turned to him.

He stopped. "Um… big birds, crosswalks -"

"No," Rachel said, shaking her head. "I mean _most_ scared of."

"Um…" he repeated. "I'm most scared of… I don't know."

He didn't know. He didn't have a clue. The more he thought, the more he was sure it was his dad dying and being an orphan - but no, he'd get over that eventually. Something so terrifying that its existence - or losing its existence - was so very traumatic he'd live in a state of horrible grief for as long as he could stand the suffering? He wasn't sure, but for some reason his head jumped to his nightmares. Blaine dying in his arms…

But he'd never say that out loud, at least not now, and Rachel was speaking, so he couldn't regardless. "Okay," she told him. "That's okay. Do you know what Carole's is?"

"Probably Finn dying or going missing or something like that," Kurt answered. "Why?"

"It's actually your dad dying," Rachel told him, and he moved further into the apartment and saw the front of Rachel's face that he hadn't before. She was sitting with her back to the door, and though she was an actress, she was also a human being - and the human being was crying. "I'm waiting for her to call back," Rachel whispered, and Kurt stood in front of her and to the side, not processing the information. "She said the doctors said -"

"What?"

Her eyes, for the first time, met his, and he felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach so forcefully it should have sent him flying. "Carole said the doctors said that he should wake up soon, but -"

"Wake up?" his voice was rising in pitch. His day with Blaine had gone great; why was coming home always so much more damn painful? If he didn't know better he'd say Blaine was his home. "Why would he need to wake up?"

Rachel bit her lip and sniffed loudly, and another mascara-stained tear fell from her eyelashes and raced down her cheek.

* * *

Kurt was many things.

Kurt was brave. And though sometimes to others he seemed frail, he was strong. He was determined and ambitious, he was caring and supportive. He was confused at the moment, on top of shocked, hurt, and terrified, but not unintelligent. He was loyal and protective and loving and forgiving, even if it took a while - which also made him careful. Kurt was meticulous with planning and immaculate with making the plans work as they should. Kurt was talented, and kind, and witty, and loveable.

But he wasn't invincible.

What he was, however, was in love.

He knew it the moment Blaine picked up the phone. He'd known it for a while, really - he'd known it for years, and he'd never stopped knowing, he'd only started doubting - but when Blaine's voice came through his cell phone and asked "Hello?" was when Kurt knew it wasn't just going to go away like he hoped, and he couldn't make it go away like he tried.

"Blaine?"

"Kurt, hi," Blaine answered. "You kind of left in a rush this afternoon, did I overstep a boundary? I'm really sor-"

"My dad had another heart attack."

No, definitely not invincible.

* * *

It had been three hours and Carole hadn't called back. It had taken four hours from the time his father had his heart attack to when the doctor had come out to explain to them what happened when it had occurred before, but this time was different. This time there was cancer involved, and an older age, and more wear on his body. This time there were more people who would sit with him in the hospital for him and not for Kurt. This time Kurt couldn't even be one of them.

And all of it ran through his head like fire and ice. He couldn't tell which it was. When you're burned, the heart is such a surge under your skin your entire body screams in protest in that one briefest of moments, and then you feel cold everywhere but the area where the heat scorched you. When you're freezing, the opposite happens. He couldn't tell which it was.

And he didn't want to. Holding on to Blaine like a lifeline was a fairly good distraction from everything else and he wasn't going to stop.

Every time a new thought about his situation popped into his head he diluted it by analyzing another detail of Blaine.

The first time it was his arms. Strong and wrapped around him, warm, hugging him close, the vein on both sides visible running along his muscles, and Kurt felt more safe in them than he had anywhere else that he allowed himself to think of.

The second time it was his chest. He was hot, in more ways than one, but in this case it was a way that eased some of the chills racking Kurt's body. His heart beat behind the cloth of his shirt and in its beats Kurt found consistency and rhythm. Though sometimes it got faster or slower, and sometimes he was too scared of what his own heart did in reaction to focus on the soft thumps, it was Blaine's heart and he knew it was his, the same way his heart was Blaine's.

And then he didn't have to find any new details, because he'd already analyzed everything. His skin, his eyes, his eyelashes, his cheekbones, his nose, his hair, his fingers, his palms, his legs, his stomach - everything. Kurt knew and loved every aspect of Blaine, even the ones that hurt, because if he didn't what did he have to love?

That thought was exactly the kind he was trying to fight off, and it was a perfect example of his failure to do so. And so he rocked back and forth in Blaine's arms again like he had been for the past hour and a half and let himself cry.

Definitely not invincible.

"Kurt."

Definitely in love.

Kurt swallowed thickly. He'd never known how to respond when Blaine said his name like that; like his name was safe in his mouth, like he was safe in his arms, like he was golden and still hurting but rising up and Kurt ducked his head down and buried it in his chest, incapable of handling the thoughts.

"Kurt," Blaine said again, and Kurt wondered if he even knew he was saying it out loud. "Kurt, please, baby you're okay."

_Baby_. Nope, he was fairly certain Blaine was unaware he was speaking aloud. But that made it all the sweeter; in his head he was saying this, in his mind he was begging him, in the very parts of his mind that not even his sound could understand he was helping Kurt like this, loving Kurt like this.

_I love you,_ Kurt thought._ I love you, I love you, I love you, I'm scared that I love you but I love you._

What made it worse was that Blaine was crying, too. And Kurt's arms were holding him as well, it wasn't all one-sided; Blaine loved his father just like he did, and he was a part of his family, of his life, and he was just as scared as Kurt - except Blaine was basically an orphan already.

"I love you," Kurt thought once more._  
_

"I love you too," Blaine thought back, not even stopping to consider it first.

Neither of them pulled back, even though they heard the other, and neither of them stopped crying, and neither of them ran away. And that was important. They had a tendency to run away during times like these, or to make the other one run away. And that prompted Kurt to ask, "If I don't run, you won't run, right?"

"I'm not running," Blaine promised into his hair. "I'm staying right here."

And so Kurt pulled back a bit, just enough to lift his head to see the quivering but tautly-pulled face of the man holding him, and kissed away the tears that trembled on his lips.

"Wait, wait, wait." Blaine spoke against Kurt's lips brokenly, his voice a mere murmur, deep and hot with breath that Kurt breathed in eagerly. But the words called for a stop, and so Kurt did. He pulled back just enough to rest their noses and foreheads together, and looked at Blaine. And Blaine looked back, and Kurt was sure that his face looked similar to the expression the other man had; worried beyond all reason, petrified with terror to the very core, frozen in doubt and burning in pain, and totally, utterly in love. "What is this?"

"This is us," Kurt told him, and flexed his arms holding Blaine so he was pulled a bit closer. "This is me and you and us."

"But what is 'us'?" Blaine pleaded. "Are we 'just friends' like at the wedding? Are we more? Less? What's happening?"

"You are my best friend," Kurt began without hesitation; but then the trepidation hit and he paused, and Blaine's face fell in the silence. "No, but that's not it, not all of it. You're my best friend, and my first love, and my high school sweetheart, and my college buddy, and my closest loved one, and I love you."

"I love you too." Blaine didn't seem capable of hearing the sentiment without returning it, even when he looked ready to crack at the softest push and break with a forceful one. "I'll always love you."

"And I'll always love you," Kurt replied, and Blaine's eyelashes brushed against both of their cheeks, and Kurt shivered at the proximity. But Blaine seemed only to become more discouraged, and Kurt saw the hope disappearing, the tiny flecks of gold glittering and then sliding into the mesh of brownish-gray that were taking over his eyes. "I'll always be in love with you." He changed his wording just that slightest bit.

And it made the biggest difference. Gold completely overtook his eyes and Kurt was almost blinded by the brightness of it. Not for the first time, he was struck by the color; the color of sunlight through a musty window settling on a glass of whiskey. And Blaine smiled, and though it was shaky, and uncertain, it was there and it was beautiful and it was his. Kurt was his. And Blaine was Kurt's. "You still want me?"

Kurt giggled then, past the lump in his throat that threatened to overtake the ephemeral and small joy that was currently relieving him of such stress as the events of the day had. "I still want you," Kurt confirmed.

It broke his heart to know that Blaine didn't actually believe him - especially with how disappointed in himself he looked - but it made him feel better to know that he could now prove to both of them how right he was, and how okay it was that he was right. "So does this mean if I kiss you you're not going to just say it was fun?"

"Hey," Kurt scolded lightly, "It was fun. It was also a step closer to right now."

And Kurt kissed him again, and this time Blaine didn't tell him to stop. It reminded Kurt of the first time they'd kissed at all - Pavarotti's casket under them, their Dalton uniforms only serving to heat them up further, Blaine's hand moving to the side of his face so he could press against it further, tighter, hotter, closer. Kurt's hand came up like it had then, and Blaine was just as surprised as he had been the first time - but just like last time, he adjusted, and Kurt opened his mouth. It was almost scripted by now, but new all the same. They'd grown, and changed, and matured, and were new people in almost every sense - but their love had grown, changed, and matured with them, and it was as vicious and vital as ever.

They didn't leave Kurt's bedroom for a long time.

"Anderson and Lady have been in there for two hours now," Rachel said, looking at the curtain that the boys were behind. "Do you think they're alright?"

"Only one way to find out," Santana said, and rose from the couch. Rachel's eyes followed her as she walked over to the curtain. She'd been intending to yank it open and interrupt whatever they were doing - probably crying - but just as her hand rose to the fabric she heard something unmistakable.

Kissing. They were kissing.

And normally Santana would yank open the curtain anyway. Normally, Santana wouldn't give a damn what they were doing. But this wasn't normal. Blaine needed someone to kiss him - scratch that, he needed Kurt to kiss him. And Kurt needed to kiss Blaine. And not just to kiss each other, oh no, they needed each other in general, and if they wee just starting over again, or picking up from where they left off, because of this happening - Santana wasn't sure she could ruin that.

But she could sure as hell peek. Aware that Rachel was scrutinizing her acutely, she pulled on the curtain the tiniest bit and peered inside.

She bit back a sicker and let the curtain fall back, moving back into the room. "They're fine."

"Fine?" Rachel asked, suspicious. "After -"

"Kissing," Santana rephrased. "Making out. Laying down. On his bed."

"Oh." Rachel blinked and then wrinkled her nose. "Ugh. We're right in the next room."

"And we couldn't hear them, could we?" Santana challenged. "They're being respectful." And then, because she was Santana: "And hot."

"YOU ARE A CRAP LESBIAN, SANTANA LOPEZ!"

"Love you too, Lady!" Santana called back, and Rachel hid behind her hand and bit her cheek.

They could still laugh. They could cry and fret and make phone calls or stir in silence, but they could laugh, and smile, and it was all the same to them as long as they were happy. It wasn't the end of the world. Frankly, it may have been the start of a better one, at least for Kurt and definitely for the boy he was sucking the face off of on his bed.

The phone in Rachel's hand rang. Santana jumped; she'd never admit it, but she really liked Kurt's dad, and wanted to know if he'd be alright. Well, she might admit to that, but only as long as Kurt's dad never found out. But at the ringing, Rachel brought it to her ear immediately and said, "Hello?"

There was a moment of silence, and then, "He is?"

"He is what?" Santana hissed.

Rachel held up a finger. "So… he's not… dead?"

"Mmmmmm!" Santana grunted in frustration behind lips closed tightly, and she heard rustling from behind the curtain.

"But… I thought… so it's not a complication?"

"He's got to be alright. He's got to be alright -"

"He's going to be just fine, Kurt. It's okay."

They weren't so quiet anymore and Santana felt like simultaneously gagging and melting at the tone of voice they used with each other.

"He's going to… they don't know?" Rachel asked. Santana twirled for lack of anything else to do and played with her hair restlessly. "But he will?" A pause. "They don't know?"

"Oh, god -"

"Kurt, deep breaths."

"Can't. Out of breath."

"Oh… sorry."

A chuckle.

Santana groaned and stomped her foot impatiently. Rachel raised an eyebrow at her, a corner of her mouth tugging down, before she returned to the phone call.

"I'll tell Kurt," Rachel promised, and Santana jumped up and down twice, pumping her fists beside her as she did so in frustration. Rachel flipped her off. _We switched roles_, Santana remarked mentally. "Yes, I promise. Thank you, Carole, and I - I'm sorry."

And then Rachel hung up and Santana pounced on her. "What was that? What did they say? What happened? Is he awake? Will he be okay? What were you -"

"Would you shut up for a second so I could _tell_ you?" Rachel snapped.

"Did they switch bodies or something?"

"Wanna check?"

Santana wondered what the hell they were going to do when they both strode out of the room. Blaine headed straight for her and Kurt straight for Rachel, and then, to both of their surprises, kissed their girl on the cheek. "What was that?" Santana asked Blaine, but not as harshly as she might have if it had been Kurt.

"I love you too," Rachel said to Kurt, but not as confusedly as she might have if it had been Blaine.

"No, they're still themselves," Blaine decided.

"Didn't you just kiss Hummel with that mouth?" Santana asked.

"Yep, that's Satan," Kurt agreed dryly.

"Santana," Blaine corrected automatically.

"Relax, he means it endearingly," Santana reassured him.

"So what's up with my dad?" Kurt asked, turning back to Rachel. And the other two followed his example; she had three pairs of eyes trained on her before she could blink.

She gulped and the last traces of humor slid from her face. "So, he had another heart attack. The… the cancer doesn't seem like it's actually affecting anything but his prostate, so that's good. On the downside, he's in a coma again, and it's like it was last time, they don't know if he'd going to wake up."

"Thank god," Kurt sighed, relieved, and sank into the couch cushions. "He'll wake up, like last time."

"Well…" Rachel looked down at her hands. "The things is that he's already had a heart attack, and two within the amount of time it's been between them is… not… good. To say the least."

"Your point?" Santana was sure Kurt didn't mean it quite so forcefully, but he said it that way, and Rachel flinched.

"They don't think he will wake up this time, and when they showed Carole the statistics she said it looked really bad."

"Shut up."

"Kurt -"

"No, Rachel." His face was wooden. "Shut up."

"Kurt -" Santana tried.

"_No_," Kurt said again.

"Kurt."

"Yes?"

Blaine took the few steps away from Santana and to Kurt and knelt by the couch. "Don't tell me to shut up."

Kurt smiled. It was fake, but he tried. "Shut up."

"You shut up."

"Sexual tension," Santana muttered, rolling her eyes. "I swear, Kurt, if you and Blaine weren't both if such crappy parts of your life right now I would force you both to just go off and elope right now."

"Don't," Blaine said, looking over his shoulder seriously, his eyes warning and wide. She took a look at him, and at the set of Kurt's jaw that had returned while she'd spoken, and knew Blaine was right.

"Fine," she told him.


	8. Part 8

"We don't have the money," Kurt explained to Rachel for the thousandth time, running his hands through his hair and trying to stand still in front of the mirror. "We can't fly out there, we're broke as Santana's cold, shriveled heart."

"That's not funny," said a voice from the other side of the door, and just for a moment Kurt's spirits lifted. He knew that voice. Blaine slid the door open and entered, Santana in tow behind him, raised eyebrows and a sour expression on her face. "Santana's heart isn't cold, shriveled or broken."

"I'm not sure about cold," Santana mused. "And you two aren't broke, Hummel. You work at Vogue."

"I know where I work," Kurt snapped. "I also know that I have today and tomorrow off and then have to go back. I have class -"

"Nope," Blaine interrupted, smiling proudly. "I gave the professors our notifications of absences and got the information on what they're going over, and you'll be back by Friday, don't worry."

"What's going on?" Rachel asked, turning to face them the same time Santana closed the door.

"Anderson got us plane tickets," Santana explained.

Both Rachel and Kurt stared for a moment. "What?" Kurt asked. "Plane tickets?"

"To Ohio," Blaine went on, noticing their lack of enthusiasm and letting it kill his smile. "To see your dad. I mean, we'll have to come back Thursday night, but if we leave now like we should we'd get there really soon." He looked around for approval. Santana nodded, but aside from that, the other occupants of the room stared at him blankly. "To see your dad…" Blaine added again, unsure of the words and barely letting them cross his lips. His eyebrows furrowed.

"To see my dad," Kurt repeated slowly.

"To see your dad," Blaine confirmed. Santana rolled her eyes.

"You have a concussion," Rachel said.

"So?" Blaine asked. "It's no big deal, I'll take my medication before we get on the plane."

"But won't it hurt? With the air pressure and stuff?" Kurt nodded in agreement with his roommate.

"Um…" Blaine looked between the two of them. "I don't think so, but even if it does it doesn't matter that much. We'll still get there -"

"It does too matter, Hobbit," Santana growled. "Just because it's you doesn't mean it's unimportant."

"I'm not… I'm not saying that," Blaine replied.

Kurt really looked at him. His cheeks, which had been flushed just moments before, were loosing color now, and his eyes, which had been gleaming with anticipation, seemed to slowly lessen their luster as they averted to the ground. His hair was gelled carefully, and though over the past week Kurt had grown even more impossibly fond of his unruly curls, he was glad to see something so normal again, so commonplace. But the bags under Blaine's eyes and the way his hands, which were lingering uncertainly in front of his pockets, trembled just slightly were not normal and he hoped they wouldn't become commonplace.

"Give it a rest, Santana," Kurt said, moving to his side and away from Rachel. Blaine seemed to grow both stronger and weaker the nearer he drew towards him - he held himself a little higher, but it seemed to take more out of him. "He's comfortable with it, so it can't be that detrimental. And I want to see my dad."

Rachel pursed her lips and Santana crossed her arms. When Kurt finally stood beside Blaine, he wrapped his arm around his waist automatically, and Blaine perked up visibly, as if he'd been handed the cure to the common cold. He was cold and clammy and Kurt could feel it through his shirt. He fought back flinching when he realized what it was and started wondering about what could have caused it - but Santana broke through his thoughts. "I'm getting really tired of giving in to you guys," she snapped.

"You could agree with us in the first place," Kurt pointed out, and she glared at him.

* * *

"You sure you're alright?" Kurt asked, for what was probably the millionth time. "You really seem kind of sick."

"I'm fine, I promise," Blaine told him.

"Really?" Kurt pressed. The airport was swarmed with people; on cellphones, on laptops, playing games, doing work, reading books, texting people, getting food, talking to their friends and family - and they were worlds away from the cabin of the airplane. Boarding, Blaine had seemed ill as it was, and Kurt had marked it down to nervousness that was entirely appropriate. But as they got closer and closer to takeoff, Blaine fidgeted more and more, and Kurt was beginning to get desperate to know what was bothering him. With Rachel talking to Santana across the isle, Kurt thought it safe to insist on discussing the issue in hushed tones.

"Yeah, I'm just… kind of tired," Blaine admitted loosely, shrugging it off as if it were no big deal. It was further than he'd gotten before when asked.

"How much sleep did you get last night?" Kurt pried. "I know you went home late, but not _that_ late."

Blaine shook his head.

"Blaine," Kurt pressed, twining their fingers together.

"None," Blaine let he word loose with a gust of breath and then bit the inside of his cheek, ashamed. "I stayed up trying to get my parents to agree to buying the tickets." He blinked slowly. "I couldn't convince them and they hung up on me. I bought them myself, with my own money that they 'give' me monthly… if Santana didn't work we wouldn't be eating for the next week."

"Oh, Blaine," Kurt sighed. If his heart had been capable of doing so it would have been weeping, like he wanted to, and would have cracked right down the middle. "Shh, it's alright. Come here, sleep on me."

"I'm sorry," Blaine murmured, but he leaned to the side and into Kurt anyway. "I'm sorry."

"Please don't be sorry," Kurt asked of him, massaging the back of his neck gently as his boyfriend nestled into the crook of his shoulder. "There's nothing to be sorry about, you did nothing wrong."

"Why don't they love me, Kurt?"

Blaine wasn't asking because he wanted Kurt to tell him they did. And he wasn't asking because he wanted them to love him, although he undoubtedly desired it. He wasn't asking because he was naive and couldn't figure it out. No, Blaine wasn't like that. If he wanted Kurt to say someone loved him, he'd say "I love you." If he wanted his parents to love him, he'd work a million times as hard as he should have to make them do so. If he were naive he wouldn't understand that they didn't love him in the first place. Blaine was asking because he needed to know, because he needed to comprehend the answer, and because Kurt was the panacea for him; anything brought to Kurt was made better in the end, at least in his eyes, and so he brought forth the question he'd been holding back for what Kurt was sure was far too long.

But how was Kurt supposed to answer?

Blaine was alive in his arms, breathing, blood rushing around, muscles flexing, bones moving, cells living and dying every millisecond. And he was the best thing that could have possible been alive in his arms. He was kind; considerate; generous; selfless; positive; supportive; loyal… to everyone but himself. He was a good human being, not flawless but good, not perfect but stunning. He was things others were not and others were things he was not, but that could be said of every living creature on the planet, and possibly in the universe. He'd been created distantly from stardust and someday his remnants would disappear and create something new and Kurt's name would be beside his on the headstone and their children would put flowers on their grave every year.

So why would two people who should have been the first and last ones to adore him so much it physically hurt hate him? How could they find the lack of humanity?

But they weren't inhuman. Inhumane, yes, but not inhuman. Parents who hate their children aren't monsters. All the people that are called monsters are just that - people. They're not really good people, but they're not aliens. You can't just call someone something that dehumanizes them simply because they do things that don't fit your morals. They're human, they're people. They're just scary people.

And looking at Blaine, he found that he hated these particular people very, very much, because Blaine was just moments from falling asleep and still had no answer to a question that had to have been murdering him slowly since who knows when.

If Kurt had believed in Hell, he would have been certain it was empty. All the devils were up here. And when we tried to drown our own devils, both found that they didn't need to breath - and then they started swimming. That was actually a reason Kurt didn't believe in Hell or Heaven or God - Earth was Hell and the demons were people, and if either had been real, the Devil would have been God.

"I don't know," Kurt told him. "They were taught something and they cling to it, instead of clinging to the thing that could teach them something better. I don't know why." Kurt wrapped his arm around Blaine's shoulders, and in his ears he felt the pressurization of the cabin begin as the plane started taking off.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry for things you need, Blaine. None of it is your fault."

The silence told Kurt that Blaine didn't agree. "Does Burt love me?" Blaine asked instead.

Kurt kissed his temple and lowered his lips to his ear to breathe his answer: "Yes. Everyone that's important loves you."

"My parents are important."

Kurt rested his cheek on Blaine's head. "So are you." _But you don't love yourself_, is what he didn't say.

* * *

"Kurt?"

"Carole, we just got off the plane. Where are you?"

"I'm waiting for you just - here, right here, I see you!"

Kurt took the phone away from his ear and scanned the room. It didn't take long for him to spot Carole, waving frantically and running towards them, Finn right behind. He had eyes only for Rachel, who, as soon as she spotted him, made a sound like a dying animal and dropped her purse, running as fast as she could towards him. Santana hung back with Blaine when Kurt let go of his hand and though Blaine reached out to grab him and hold him back, he retracted his hand before it snagged the fabric of his shirt and let him run off.

"He'll be right back," Santana assured him. "He just missed her."

"I know," Blaine said, but he still felt almost naked when exposed without Kurt right beside him.

* * *

Blaine had fallen asleep during the ride to the hospital.

Carole wasn't sure when it had happened, but it had. He'd fallen asleep on Kurt's shoulder once more, but because he'd been like that since he slid into the seat next to him, he hadn't noticed it when his breaths became even and slow and he'd stopped responding to things people said. But when they parked and the car's brakes gave a short little squeal, Blaine jerked awake, pulling his head off Kurt's shoulder and blinking repeatedly, his hand twitching until he brought it up to his head and started rubbing at his eyes. "Are we there?"

He looks so young. "We're there, sweetie," Carole told him gently, smiling as much as she could at the moment. She felt brittle still and smiling caused the illusion that her face was cracking into different zones; different areas of it displayed different feelings, and she knew it was frightening. Finn had started looking away whenever she tried to smile lately but at least now he had the excuse of staring at Rachel. Blaine, on the other hand, didn't do that or look startled, like Kurt did; he just sat there and took in all the different emotions, nodded, and yawned, unphased.

She'd never loved him quite so much.

"Ready to go in?" Kurt asked him, and Blaine nodded again. Kurt took his hand, opened the door, took a deep breath -

It was in that moment that everyone saw just how really, really broken he was, and how terrified he was of what was happening. It was indescribable, the look on his face; it was as indescribable as it was silent.

And then the look was gone and he was pulling his boyfriend along and Carole wanted to cry again.

* * *

"_Santana_!"

If anyone else had called her name she might have hit them. If anyone else had acknowledged her, perhaps with the exception of Blaine and maybe Carole, she might had hit them. If anyone else had used that tone of voice with her, she'd have hit them. Not because it was mean or scathing or anything she'd come to expect, but because it was loving, excited, and worried beyond belief; everything everyone else was being with everyone else while she was alone.

But no - there was Brittany, sprinting down the hall toward her.

_Brittany_.

Her blonde hair flew out behind her; she'd remembered to brush it. Good. Santana knew it was good, but she felt a pang of jealousy when she realized that either Sam was the one reminding her to do it now or she'd grown independent enough to do it herself. But it was still golden and still shone like her eyes did as she raced closer, his strong legs pushing her forward one bound at a time. She flew along the hospital corridor. Sam was still just turning the corner, but the moment Brittany had spotted Santana from down the hall she'd taken off.

Walking through the hospital doors was made impossibly brighter just by her presence, and Santana found, to her complete (lack of) surprise, that she was running, too.

And then Brittany's arms were flying open and Santana barreled into them, ignoring the people she'd walked in with and the people in the waiting room and the nurse at the desk and Lips McGee walking toward them somberly. She shouldn't have been smiling; Burt was in a coma induced by his second heart attack, she was surrounded by sad people, and the hospital reeked of the death it tried and failed so hard to fight away just a bit longer. But as soon as Brittany's arms were around her and hers were around Brittany a wide grin spread across her face and she clutched her as tightly as she could.

"I missed you!" Brittany's voice is as sweet as it ever was, honest and straightforward and beautiful, and Santana feels like melting.

"I missed you, too," she admits - and then, to her humiliation but also amusement, she feels tears welling up in her eyes and her throat constricting. "God, I missed you."

"Were you lonely?" Brittany asked her, her voice quieter now, more serious, and Santana's smile faltered. "When we said goodbye this summer you promised me you wouldn't be lonely."

Santana had been lonely, though. Hadn't she? She'd spent nights crying herself to sleep in bed, reading through the journal of a semi-suicidal roommate who hid everything from them, texting people randomly, helping drunks at the bar, and wasting away a life in New York she thought would be great. Hadn't she been lonely?

No.

It hit her with a jolt and she squeezed Brittany tighter. She'd be alone sometimes, but she'd never been lonely. Sometimes Blaine was at school, and sometimes she was at work, and sometimes she was surrounded by other people but not really there, like she had been the whole way to the hospital since the airport. Alone, yes. But…

_"I love you, San."_

But had she really been lonely?_  
_

_"Santana -!" he called after her in a hushed shout, but she just waved and hurried out the door again, this time not bothering to be quiet._

Or had she just been sad?_  
_

_"If he doesn't come home tonight," said a voice they hadn't heard until then, one that was bitter and cutting and determined, one that belonged to Santana, "I will personally do everything I can to take down every single person who worked on him. His home is with_ me, _with _us_. He is my family and I am his. I managed to get the entire current staff of a restaurant fired before, and while this might be slightly more difficult, I assure you I will not stop." And then Santana seemed to tower over her in her heels and her hair and with the flames in her eyes. "And I will succeed… _unless _my friend comes back. I assure you I am more than capable of handling everything that needs to be done to get him back into perfect health. But I want him home, and I want him home _now_."_

Holding onto Brittany like she was now, reflecting on everything they'd been through in the past two weeks alone, she tried to pick out a moment where she'd felt utterly desolate and without any hope of being held like this again._  
_

_"Nice to hear from you too," Santana teased lightly._

And she couldn't._  
_

_Right before it closed, he heard her whisper, "Bye," back to them - or maybe just to him._

There's a big difference between being lonely and being alone, and Santana knew that._  
_

_"He is able to come home tonight," the doctor awarded them with the news, though they already knew it; regardless, Santana took a breath as though it were her first clean one in years, and Kurt felt the same way. _

Because when you're alone, you miss people, even if they're standing right there._  
_

_"I'm glad _you _told _me_," Blaine said in response, giving her a small smile. "I thought maybe you'd run me over with a bus before you admitted you were scared of something more than anything else in the world."_

And when you're lonely, you stop feeling like a person at all._  
_

Santana squeezed Brittany to her closely. "I don't think I was lonely," she answered honestly. "I think I was sad, but I don't think I was lonely."

Something different was in Brittany's smile when she pulled back to look at her, and said, "Good. Next time try not to be sad."

* * *

Kurt's mother had told him something once. He'd found an empty bird's nest in the tree outside their house when he was four- empty, that was, with the exception of one small, blue egg. He'd rushed inside and fetched his mom and showed it to her, and asked if he could keep it.

She laughed gently and ruffled his hair. "No, baby," she told him, "If you keep it, the Momma bird's not going to have a baby to take care of."

"But I'll take care of the baby," he insisted.

"But it's not the same," his mother told him. "If someone took you away from me but still took care of you, would you be sad?"

Kurt had nodded vigorously.

"And I would be sad, too," she smiled. "I'd be really sad if someone took my baby away from me, and your Daddy feels the same way."

"So if I keep it, I'll make it sad?"

"Yes, sweetheart."

"Are all babies sad when their Mommies and Daddies leave?"

His mother had made a face he had never wanted to see on her before or after that day. "The lucky babies are the ones that leave their Mommies and Daddies on their own," she explained. "But yes, they're sad when their Mommies and Daddies leave, if they leave."

"Momma, you're never gonna leave me, right?"

She'd taken his hand then and her hands were soft. "I'm never going to try," she promised.

A fat lot of good that promise had done. Yes, he was sad when she left. And yes, his dad was sad when he left in turn, too. And yes, it was unavoidable.

No, he hadn't gotten over it yet.

So if he lost his dad on top of all of this…

He wondered just how many people a year died of sadness. And then Blaine's hand in his tightened its grip for a moment long enough to tear him out of his reverie and back into reality - and in reality, he was laying down on the waiting room chairs as comfortably as possibly with his head in his boyfriend's lap, letting his nimble fingers work through his hair gently and absentmindedly.

"Hi," Kurt said uselessly.

Blaine smiled at him and it was weak but it was real. "My name's Blaine."

His stomach gave a swoop so long Santana could have heard it in hell. "Kurt."

* * *

They'd spent three minutes total in that waiting room before the nurse had come back and said that they could visit him now.

It was just those few words that set Rachel off, and she didn't know why, until she dug back in her head to another point, far too close time-wise for her taste, and remembered waiting at the hospital for Blaine for hours. No news, no word on if he was okay, or even alive. Nothing. _Hours_ of nothing.

And this was just three minutes, but she doubted Burt would be walking out of here when they saw _him_.

"It's gonna be okay," Finn told her, and she fought down the entirely inappropriate and unnecessary urge to correct him into saying 'going to'. He rubbed her arm soothingly, and she stood up with him. Kurt had shot out of Blaine's lap like an arrow, back as straight as a board, and Blaine had reacted badly, clutching onto his arm tightly so Kurt hissed in momentary pain before Blaine let go, realizing what he did.

They'd had to wait those three minutes because Brittany and Sam had been done visiting two minutes beforehand, and there was a five-minute wait policy they were testing out.

Rachel didn't really want to be one of their lab rats at the moment.

But she walked with the others. Their footsteps all meshed together if she didn't concentrate them apart, and images blended so she was walking in a sea of white with a constant stampede rushing past her ears.

Until they reached the room.

And then everything was crystal clear.

The door was opened slowly. Wait, no, it was normal pace. It just seemed slow because she was absorbing so much information. The floors were tiled and she could see how the florescent, slightly green-tinted lights made the shadows they cast longer. No light came from the window they passed but the lights of other windows - the world outside was dark. There were chairs set outside the doors that were lined on the left side, and some doorknobs had padlocks on them. Only two of the several she could see peering down the corridor, but still, it was plural.

The hospital room Burt was in was different. The tile was the same but the walls were different, eggshell instead of snow white, and she could see the edge of the cot.

There were wires already. Strung up. And the door was opening, and she could see more. The blanket rose, it covered a lump that was his foot - then his other - and that was his arm, with a bracelet on the wrist that lay creasing the sheet, And his shoulder, past his chest, where under his hospital gown there were wires galore hooked up. And then his face, and god, how could she not have connected the paleness of his skin to his condition? He was totally colorless, black and white in a room of black shadows and white walls.

Kurt was through the door before anyone else, even the nurse, and Rachel took the advantage of him being in her line of sight to drop her eyes and close them, choosing to look at nothing instead of what she'd come to see.

Finn guided her into the room slowly, and she could feel the difference in him as he passed the threshold. He held himself a little tighter, held her a little rougher. If she'd thought it wise to open her eyes, she'd have looked to see his face, so he could see hers and know it was alright - but instead she ducked into his side so neither of them could really see the other. Where would the benefit be?

"They say he's supposed to be getting better."

Carole's voice broke the silence that had seemed like such a law that Rachel jumped, and Finn, out of instinct, she was sure, held her closer, both arms finding their way around her now.

"But is he?" Santana asked. With Brittany no longer present - and having left with Sam - she was more bitter than she had been before, and to top it off there was concern for everyone there that she couldn't deal with. "Is he getting better? Is he okay?"

Carole cleared her throat. "He will be."

"That's not what I asked."

"Stop, Santana. He will be, and that's enough." Blaine's voice was softer and didn't cut through the silence so much as merge with it. It was comforting to listen to him, even if she was sweltering under her layers and with Finn wrapped around her.

"No, it's not." Santana was stubborn. "Just 'will be' isn't good enough. Waiting around for someone else's future to happen when you can do something to help isn't good enough."

"What can we do, Santana?" Finn demanded. And then, to himself: "What can we do?"

"Everything the doctors can," Santana said. "We have the capability to fight his battle with him, we just don't have the training or knowledge."

"And without the training and knowledge we lack the capability," Blaine told her. Rachel was worried about the silence from Kurt, but she didn't dare look up. "And we are fighting his battle with him. We're just fighting our own side of it."

"You're too busy fighting your own," Santana snapped. "We all are."

"The reason nobody notices why you're sad is because they're waiting for you to see their own sadness." Carole's voice came back. "We're all fighting our own battles, Santana, but our lives are connected, and so all these battles are part of a bigger war. We can't fight his battles, we can only fight ours - but we can help win the war. It's what we're doing and it's what we can do. If you're going to get down on us all because we can't physically make him healthy I'm going to ask you to leave."

"So kick me out," Santana growled. "My words won't follow. They're going to stay behind and haunt you until he wakes up, isn't it? Because then things will be better, and my words won't mean anything anymore. But someday they will. They'll come back to you in some way and you won't be able to kick me out then because I might not even be there."

Finn pulled Rachel to the side, but she could hear the click of Santana's boots as she left the room ans strode purposefully down the hallway.

"I'm sorry, Kurt," Blaine's voice fretted. "She's just stressed, I swear. She really c-"

"Are you okay?"

"M-Me?" Blaine stammered. "Why?"

"He's as much your dad as mine."

Rachel started crying a while ago, but she couldn't remember when. Blaine joined her when Kurt said that.

* * *

Carole looked at Kurt intently. "Is there something you forgot to announce in all the chaos, Kurt?" she asked.

Blaine had left the room to go after Santana and calm down, and he still wasn't back. Finn had had to take Rachel aside, and they were out in the hall with the door closed firmly between them. Kurt had been silent and calculating until he sat down in the chair by his father's bed and took his hand.

_"If you can hear me, squeeze my hand."_

"Hm?" Kurt asked, looking up at her in confusion.

"You and Blaine..?" she trailed off.

"Oh." Kurt seemed taken aback. "Yeah. Blaine and I. Yes. I forgot to tell you. Right. Sorry."

"You're back together?"

The heart monitor skipped a beat, and in the blank space it left Kurt's face had been shocked into blankness. It took a while before the normal pulse settled their own, and Kurt answered her. "Yes, we're back together."

The pulse skipped another beat, and the finger holding Kurt's twitched.


	9. Part 9

"Santana?" Blaine called down the hall, ducking around the corner. The mass of ebony hair that had been stalking away paused, as did the consistent _click-tap, click-tap_ of her boots. "Santana, wait up."

"What, Blaine?"

"Hi," he said instead of actually bringing up a topic, catching up to her just as she turned to face him.

Her eyes were red. A lump rose in his throat at the sight. "What?" she asked again.

"What was that about?" He made sure his words were gentle, but not so gentle they were over-stimulating for her; she could only handle half as much love as she could hate, which was a weakness she saw as a strength.

"It was about the fact that we can't help," Santana snapped.

"So why are you blaming us all?" And he couldn't help the slight bit of acid that leaked into his voice.

Oddly enough, that acid seemed to dissolve a bit of her temper, and she took a moment to compose herself before she responded to him. "I'm not blaming anyone," she contradicted. "That means I'm saying it's someone's fault. I'm not saying it's anyone's fault. We can't help this."

"I gathered," he remarked dryly. "You said as much. You said we can't help."

"I want to," she told him suddenly, and he raised his eyebrows. "I want to help. But I can't. We can't. I hate feeling helpless."

He wondered how long it had taken her to get that off her chest, and pulled her into his, wrapping his arms around her before she could say something else. Against his expectations - which she seemed to be frequently these days - she hugged him back, but against his wishes she did so lightly. "Don't be afraid to hold on to me," he whispered, and he knew he'd said the wrong thing. 'Don't be afraid' - something that should never be said to Santana or anyone like her, anyone who prided themselves on their ability not to be frightened. 'To hold on to me' - something that implied she needed someone to hold on to instead of someone to hold, that she was the weaker one and not the one giving comfort. Again, not very Santana-esque.

And yet her response was to stop half-hugging him and cling to him. He was reminded horribly and yet relievingly of their first fight in the apartment and how they'd hung on each other afterwards like drapes - and the first thing that came to mind was, "I love you, San." And so he sad it.

She gasped a little at the words, and burrowed further into the crook of his neck. "Love you t-too, B." She said it exactly like she had the first time. And, like the first time, he squeezed his arms around her as tightly as he could, so that they both felt their lungs constrict from the lack of air.

When he started loosening his grip, she dug her fingers into the material of his shirt and forced him to take back his actions with the tearful words, "No, I need to hold on!"

* * *

"Hey, Brittany," Blaine said into his phone, Santana's hand clasping his with so much force he was starting to lose feeling in it. "We're still at the hospital, but I think Santana and I are done for the night. Is it alright if we stay over there?" Santana's heel clicked impatiently against the floor.

"I'm not at my house tonight," Brittany answered. "I'm staying with Sam at the Hummels'. But you can both stay here with us."

Blaine looked sideways at Santana and repressed a sigh.

And suddenly: "Awake? He's awake?!"

"Already?" Blaine asked, startled, when Santana jerked up so her back was as straight as she used to tell people she was. "He's already awake?" He looked; her eyes were stuck on the figure running towards them from the corner - Rachel. She was waving her arms frantically and mouthing the words they'd both been repeating.

Awake. "Brittany, I think we might be later than anticipated. Burt just woke up."

* * *

Santana was the last one in the room.

When she walked in, she took in everything she could. There was a nurse standing in front of Finn, but he was so freakishly tall she could still see him. The nurse was bent so she could check on the medical things hooked up to Burt. Kurt was sitting on her other side, his hand in his father's, and he was either crying or laughing, she couldn't tell. Carole had her hands over her mouth and her eyes shut tightly and she was bending over so her forehead rested on Burt's. Rachel had gone straight to Finn's side and the height difference obscured her from Santana's view. And Blaine was standing stock-still a few feet in front of her, and behind his back she was the only one who could see him wringing his hands.

"Burt?" Blaine asked. But everyone was already talking at the man on the bed that Santana couldn't see because of the people, and his meek voice was unheard. Blaine's shoulders drooped and she was glad that she couldn't see his face, because she didn't want to have to deal with it.

But she didn't want him to be making the face she was sure he was making anyway, so she stepped up beside him, took one of his hands forcefully from the other, stared straight ahead and marched him to the end of Burt's bed.

"Burt?" she asked, because Blaine was silent.

"Santana?" Burt's voice, much weaker than she'd come to expect from him, came from under Carole's head, and she lifted her head to look at her warily. And then Burt, pale and with those bags under his eyes - but the eyes were open - saw Blaine. "Blaine, you're here."

"I'm here," Blaine repeated.

"He's here with us," Kurt confirmed, though it was useless. Santana repressed the urge to roll her eyes at the repetition.

Blaine shifted uncomfortably and even the nurse picked up on the silence and averted her eyes. "He's also dating your son again," Santana said, when nobody else spoke up.

"Alright, Mr. Hummel, someone will be coming in to check on you shortly," said the nurse, busying her hands and not making eye contact. "Try to keep levels of stress and noise down, we don't need his heart any more pressured," she instructed them, and then hurried out of the room. Nobody cared enough to as much as watch her leave.

"You're dating again, huh?" Burt asked, completely nonplussed, to Kurt, who blushed ever-so-slightly.

"Yeah," Kurt answered. "Yeah, we are."

And Burt laughed. It was brief and quiet and more of a jagged breath than an actual laugh but it was clearly a laugh and it was clearly meant to accompany the smirk he bore. "About damn time."

Blaine's reaction was not one that anybody expected - he laughed with Burt.

"What?" Kurt demanded. "What's funny?"

"We made a bet," Burt chuckled. "I think I just lost."

"I'd make you pay up, but I'm pretty sure _waking_ up was enough payment," Blaine told him, and moved to stand closer, beside Kurt, dragging Santana with him.

"What was the bet?" Kurt trilled.

"I bet him you'd get your head out of your ass and take him back after you left Adam about three months ago," Burt said. "He bet you never would. So technically, Anderson, _neither_ of us won."

Blaine laughed again, and Santana had never heard a sound more beautiful than his laugh at that moment. Seriously, how fantastic is laughing? You have to release this weird, unique sound, and only you can do it exactly the way you do, and you can only do it for real when your body is _physically incapable_ of handling the joy it's been given. Most peoples' laughs just sounded like… laughs. Blaine's laugh sounded like what it meant. And she thought it was beautiful.

And then he pulled away from her so he could wrap his arms around Burt as much as he could as he bent over him, and he hugged him tightly. Burt moved to hug him back, but only did so weakly, though it was made obvious to everyone else present that he wanted to hug him a lot tighter. "I'm so glad you woke up," Blaine murmured, and Santana couldn't even feel selfish about him letting go of her hand because he hadn't had a parent to hold on to in months.

* * *

"Blaine?"

"Mm?"

With Burt asleep next to them - or rather, pretending to be asleep, because Kurt was Kurt and knew when his dad was faking - and Blaine's arms around his torso on the chair they shared, as comfortable as they could be on the small plastic seat, he felt it an appropriate time to bring up the question he'd had since he'd found out. "After the shooting… at McKinley. What did your parents do?"

Blaine was silent and still and Kurt couldn't blame him one bit. This was a boy who had cut himself and estranged himself and hated himself for what was way over a year, maybe even two, and had just started healing. He'd been through bullying and beatings at his former school, he'd been through pressure to leave Dalton (from Kurt, no less), he'd been through bullying and pressure and a slushie that scratched his cornea _and_ a school shooting at McKinley, and at NYADA he'd been through a car accident, a bad fall, and now this. The last thing he needed to think about was his failed relationship with his parents.

But he finally spoke. "I told Tina that we stayed up all night talking and hugging and crying." He swallowed. "Part of it's true. They did hug me, but only once each, and then mostly each other for the rest of the night. We stayed up all night talking, but it wasn't a good kind of talk. And we all cried. But I was crying because my mom was the first one I called when the All Clear was given and my mom was crying because she almost wished I hadn't been able to."

"What?!"

"Shh, baby," Blaine said automatically, and Blaine was trying to comfort _him_, holy crap. Did he ever think of himself at all? "It's okay. My parents couldn't love me like they were supposed to, and that's not their fault, it's how they were told to live and they can't just give it up."

"But -" and then Kurt remembered that he'd been the one to want the answer, and of course Blaine wouldn't interrupt him, he'd left him go on forever. "Sorry. Go on."

"Alright," Blaine agreed quietly. "Well, basically, they told me that they loved me and they wished they could love me more. And they said they were really happy I wasn't hurt or dead and that I was their son by blood. And then they hugged me each and told me to go to bed but instead I just sat out in the hallway crying because I could hear them crying inside because they wanted to be better parents."

"They… cried?" It was foreign to Kurt. There are always bad guys in a story, right? And not every bad guy has some twisted past or was ever a victim. Sometimes they're just ignorant, sometimes they're truly sadistic. Blaine's parents were supposed to be the bad guys here - but bad guys aren't supposed to want to reform. That's a Disney movie and life is no Disney movie. "They said they wanted to be better parents?"

"To each other, yes," Blaine responded dryly. "Never to me." Kurt had never heard him speak so bitterly of his parents, but here it was, in its true form. Blaine was jealous beyond belief of the strength his parents built on their trust in each other and he wanted it. He wanted that level of commitment and love and he was being denied it and it _mattered_ to him. "But that's alright. They needed to admit it more than I needed it admitted to me."

"So why did they… um…"

"Disown me?" Blaine suggested, and Kurt flinched at the term but nodded, and Blaine smiled gently at him and ran his fingers through his hair. "None of us could be or have what we wanted, I guess."

"Mm." Kurt blinked a few times, afraid each time that he might drift off before Carole came back from the cafeteria or their friends came back and that he might drift off into another nightmare where Blaine would be in his arms, not the other way around, and he'd be as dead outside as he was mostly inside. "I love you."

Blaine's laugh wasn't real but it was there and it was a try and it was good enough. "I love you, too."

"Is that what you thought about?" Kurt asked suddenly, the new question awakening him a bit further from the drift he was fighting not to succumb to.

"When?"

"While you were in lockdown," Kurt specified. "Is that what you thought about? That you loved me?"

"Present tense, Kurt, always present tense, it'll always be true," Blaine corrected him, almost mutely, the words barely seeming to pass his lips because the rest of him was impassive. "Actually, I'm not really sure what I thought or that I could pinpoint it."

"What do you mean?"

"Well… I kind of stopped thinking with thoughts and started thinking with concepts, if that makes any sense," Blaine tried to explain, furrowing his brow. "I thought that maybe it wasn't bullets. I thought maybe it wasn't a gun, and I said it out loud, but they all shushed me. I thought I had to barricade the door and so I moved the piano. I thought I needed to get Artie down because he was in his chair. I thought everything was too loud. Noise, any noise, all noise, even my breathing, my talking, begging Ryder to turn the phone off because it was ringing, hiding in a little ball when Sam was screaming to go after Brittany in the bathroom, hearing everyone give their last messages, talking about their parents and their friends and their loves and their lives and how much they'd miss them and Tina wasn't there and I couldn't say anything into the camera because my parents didn't want to hear anything like that from me and you would be hurt if I said anything to you or about you at all and -"

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I asked," Kurt cut across his endless flow of words, and reached his hand up to cup Blaine's face tenderly, thinking that maybe if he did the pale, dead look would go away and he wouldn't be cold under his fingers. He was colder than normal, but not very - nobody else wold have been able to tell - and as soon as Kurt's palm traced against his cheek lightly the color flooded back and his eyes were golden again, even if a tear slid down his downward-facing expression and dropped onto Kurt's own cheek. It was warmer than Blaine was himself, but then, so was the tear that slipped from Kurt's eye. "I'm sorry I asked. I won't make you talk about it again, I'm sorry. I know it hurts."

"I was so scared, Kurt," Blaine trembled, and Kurt let his middle knuckle on his ring finger slide down Blaine's jawline, an action he knew from experienced could soothe him when excited in a bad way and excite him when soothed in a bad way.

"You're safe here," Kurt promised, only barely managing to make the words loud enough to hear. "You're safe right here."

"I'll be okay?"

"You'll be amazing." Kurt smiled at him then, smiled at his eyes, smiled at his lips, at his hair, his nose, his skin, his hands, his shoulder, his neck, his waist, his legs, him. "You already are. You're amazing and you're safe here. Nothing's going to hurt you."

Kurt could tell he'd struck a nerve he hadn't meant to, and he was about to apologize hastily when Blaine said, "Nothing?"

Kurt understood. "Nothing," he assured. "Not even you."

Blaine sniffed once, and then blinked back the tear that threatened to join his other one, and smiled a watery, wavering smile. And when he leaned down and nuzzled his nose against Kurt's and then pressed their lips together, Kurt could feel the smile on his own, despite the tears that were pressed between them. He kissed Blaine like he ought to have been doing for the past year and Blaine kissed him like he was made of pure gold and he was the greediest man alive.

* * *

Blaine and the others never actually spent the night with Sam and Brittany - but that was alright, because they showed up again the next day, along with the other ND. They appeared in couples or small groups off and on throughout the day, and they'd all talk to the people in the room or the halls or cafeteria, and they'd inquire as to Burt's health - even if they didn't know him at first - and then they'd wish everyone goodbye and take their leave. It was good to see his friends again, Blaine knew. He'd missed them. Marley and Jake were still holding hands, Ryder still clutched his phone, Unique still demanded respect, Kitty was still as compassionate but sassy as she'd been since after the shooting, Artie was as laid back as ever via phone call and when all the graduated ND got in touch the way he had they had great fun just passing phones around the room on speaker so everyone could contribute to the conversation.

And yet Blaine knew they had a flight to catch before midnight, and so when everyone else went to get dinner, he squeezed Kurt's hand and said he'd be down in a couple minutes. Burt hadn't seemed surprised.

As soon as the door was shut, Burt asked him, "So when are you proposing?"

Blaine actually squeaked. "Proposing?"

Burt nodded. "I know when you two didn't get together at graduation or any time after that that as soon as you eventually did you'd want to marry him. Right?"

"Well, I… I've always intended to… um…" Blaine's face was flushed crimson and his eyes flitted about the room. "I mean, I love him a lot and I never ever want to hurt him ever again, but I… I was going to ask if I could have -"

"My permission?" Burt finished, amused. "Kid, you've always had my permission."

"But…" Blaine had no idea where his sentence was going. The room seemed hot, overly hot, and he tugged at the collar of his shirt. "I mean, I don't want to get married now. No, no!" he added hastily as Burt raised his eyebrows. "I want to marry him, I _always_ want to marry him, but I mean we're really young and it costs a lot of money and I'm still just barely settling in."

"I know," Burt scoffed. "Listen, kid, I'm not expecting you to propose and then run off and get married in the same week like Carole and I. That was quick and I know it, but only because we were grown adults and were absolutely certain and had everything settled about it. You're not even in your twenties yet, neither of you, and you're not ready for that."

"So why are you giving me permission?" The more Blaine tried to understand the more confused he got.

Burt chuckled at him and for a second Blaine scratched at his ankle absentmindedly, raising it up so he could simply drop his shoulder and get to it. "Because you're ready to _be_ ready. You love each other and if you hadn't had that joke of a beak-up you'd be engaged right now."

"So you're really… you're really okay with this?" Blaine murmured.

"You're already my son," Burt told him, seriousness taking control. "So I'm fine with you asking Kurt if he wants to make it official on paper."

Blaine shook his head. "I really didn't expect this to be how this would go."

* * *

For the rest of the day, Blaine was preoccupied. Even when Emma and Will visited and made jokes about how Will had had a cold last week and Emma had been obsessed with keeping everything clean and hadn't yet gotten sick.

Santana stepped out into the hall with Brittany and Sam stayed in the room with Blaine. It was wonderful to catch up with him, but when Santana came back in angry and Brittany came back in sad both of the boys had shared a look of discomfort.

* * *

"I'm sorry, Dad. I'll call every day."

"It's not like it's your fault, buddy."

* * *

The plane ride was short. Blaine was fidgeting the entire time because he still had no clue what he was doing. Who would? Looking over at Kurt, he found that he was incapable of thinking anything but that he was beautiful.

And that he felt oddly congested, but he didn't pay it any mind.

He saw how Kurt kept ducking his head and taking a deep breath every few minutes, and he wondered just how hard this was for him. Blaine knew it was hard on himself, but on Kurt? Kurt had lost his mother when he was eight and even though it was over eleven years ago he obviously was still horrified and lost whenever he recalled it. He'd nearly lost his father, too, and this was how many times now? And it was entirely possible he'd lose him far too quickly anyway. He'd lose him someday regardless of all that, too.

And it was starting to show. "You look sad," Blaine told him, and Kurt turned to face him, surprised he'd spoken.

"I'm not sad," Kurt said, brows furrowing.

And that was the end of that because neither of them knew what to say or do. Kurt went back to his magazine and tutting at the fashions every now and then, and Blaine went back to staring at him and wanting to say something.

He should have expected Kurt's curiosity to lead to the questions he asked. He should have expected Kurt's reaction, or even his own. The words had come out in a jumbled mess, leaving and running together and with odd pauses and stresses among them; but Kurt had seem genuinely shocked and bothered that his parents had felt at all bad about their parenting.

Naive was the last word Blaine wanted to apply to Kurt, but he had to in this case. Kurt's life had been horrible and he knew it, but it had always been vaguely black and white with his perception of people. He only ever saw the bad or the good in people - or, with people like Rachel, he saw both frequently but his perception of them was already one way so everything seemed to fit into that one way. There were no exceptions to the rule. But people aren't like that and Blaine was aware of this; good people do bad things and bad people do good things and sometimes a person is as nuetral as the world they live in.

People who disown their sons because of ignorance can be good people. And his parents were good people. But Kurt had viewed them as the opposite and because of that he seemed incapable of seeing them any other way.

"Nobody's just black or white, you know," Blaine told him.

"Actually, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people who aren't interracial." Kurt looked up yet again.

"I didn't mean like that." Blaine shook his head. "I mean everybody's got a little bit of bad and a little bit of good inside them and the way you see them personally can't get rid of either."

Kurt didn't respond because they'd be damned if they broke a silence that thick simply to hear what they could already hear in it out loud. Blaine had always been frankly astounded by his ability to converse with Kurt in a way that seemed to be written all over him in invisible ink, a language he'd never even had to study but spoke fluently.

Kurt dropped his right shoulder a little so he was leaning closer, only the arm of the seat between them._ I want you to say more._

Blaine let his eyes wander across Kurt's face. _There's nothing more to say._

Kurt licked his lower lip gently._ But I don't like it ending there._

Blaine let the end of his mouth turn up sadly._ I never like how things end._

"Agathokakological," Kurt supplied when the silence has run out of unspoken words. "Composed of both good and evil. That's what you mean, right?"

He asked a question and questions needed answers. If no answer was given, the question wasn't truly done, and only if one was answered completely and thoroughly and with as much detail as possible could it be considered so. "Yes," Blaine responded. It was as much as he could make himself say aloud. Kurt was avoiding a real ending, and he knew it. They both did.

* * *

"Let's go home," Santana whispered.

He wasn't sure which one of them took the other's hand, but either way they walked with their fingers intertwined and their palms pressed together up the stairs and away from the street, where Kurt and Rachel were still in the cab going to their own apartment.

"Let's go home," he repeated.


	10. Part 10

Brittany had been anything but herself.

Or, at least, the Brittany Santana knew and loved had been anything but herself.

In reality, Brittany had probably been nothing but herself. Santana hated it. She hated it because Brittany was independent now, and strong, and just as kind and caring as always but a thousand times more confident and observant, and though Santana had thought her all of those things before, she had to acknowledge them as part of her now instead of just fantasize about doing so. Brittany had grown up. Brittany didn't need anyone anymore; she _wanted_ people. She'd matured, she'd adapted, and she was happy now.

And Santana had been stuck in the same place emotionally for over a year now, and she was a train wreck nobody got close enough to see. Brittany was the only person, besides possibly Blaine, who really knew things were bad, and Brittany could actually give her advice instead of just telling her to let it out and that she'd be there.

Brittany couldn't even say she'd be there. She had a boyfriend and she was happy with him and Santana was an emotional and mental cinder block, sitting there, never changing, never moving, just waiting for her builder to come and pick her up and use her again.

Every time Santana started thinking about their conversation again she realized how stupid she was. She'd called a break because of the distance, when they, out of every long-distance couple, had been the one working the most. Sure, they were a little bent out of shape, but she'd been in Ohio more than any other graduate and they Skyped or texted all the time, and they kept each other, for the most part, stable.

And she'd called an end to it.

And she thought Brittany would wait.

But then Brittany hadn't and Santana was going after her again but Brittany hadn't just stopped waiting - she'd started moving with a purpose. There's a difference between wandering aimlessly because you can't wait anymore and moving with a purpose, because when you wander aimlessly you can find your way back without meaning to, and when you move with a purpose you have a destination in mind, a future you want.

Brittany was stretching for her future and she was doing well. And Santana was still a bartender in New York with her college roommate who was currently making odd sounds in the bathroom.

Santana couldn't sleep at all. Every time sh- wait, what were those noises Blaine was making?

For a moment, her head thought the only natural course was that he was jacking off, but no, as she listened, the sounds were entirely different. He was… retching.

Throwing up.

All thoughts of Brittany vanished and she leapt to her feet, throwing the covers off of her and racing to the bathroom, her bare feet stinging on the cold apartment floor, the lighted skyline of the city making outlined silhouettes on the other side of the window glass. "Blaine?!" she called, reaching for the doorknob and trying to twist it. It moved maybe a quarter of an inch and snagged. "Blaine!"

Her frantic calls were met only with a broken silence from the other side, and then the sound of a gasp and Blaine puking again, the vomit spewing into the toilet. Santana held back her gag at the sound and flinched. Her nails scratched at the doorknob, her fist tightened around it, she pulled and tugged and then realized through her jolt of adrenaline that he'd locked it.

"Blaine, let me in," Santana ordered, still fiddling with the handle uselessly. "Blaine, let me in!"

Blaine vomited again, and she could hear him breathing heavily, and then his voice, small and scared, like a child's, moaned, "No, don't…"

"Please let me in!" she tried. "Unlock the door, let me help! I can help, let me _in_!"

"Go, San…"

"I'm not going anywhere," she nearly spit the words through her gritted teeth. "Do you hear me? I'm not going _anywhere_ unless it's into that room!"

Blaine retched again and Santana flung her fist at the door in desperation.

"Fine!" she snapped, "stay away from the door, I'm kicking it in!"

And she did.

She leaned back and kept her left foot flat against the floor, her calf muscles flexing as she held herself up, and she slammed her heel into the door right next to the knob and lock, shoving all of her weight onto it and leaning forward with everything she could.

The door flung open and hit the bathtub with an echoing crash, but she paid no mind to it, fumbling into the room. Blaine hadn't even turned on the lights, and she couldn't see a damn thing - her fingers felt along the wall for the switch, and when she found it she flicked it up and fell to her knees beside her roommate.

His eyes were shut tightly, one hand entangled in his mass of curls, his fingers gripping tightly to his scalp, his knuckles white, forming a fist. Cold sweat plastered the curls to his head and simultaneously drained the color from his cheeks and let it drip off of his chin - it also shone over the contours of his back and made it look like he was glistening under the artificial lights because he was shirtless, and only his sweatpants, old and stained, covered his legs. He shivered, his other free hand gripping the edge of the bowl tightly so he held himself over it, his dripping chin hooked over it beside his knuckles; and he looked to be in so much pain she let it steal a bit of her breath and sigh it into the air. The smell of vomit hung stagnant but fresh in the air, and she didn't have to look to know the toilet was full of it still.

But she only lost a moment taking in his appearance. "Where does it hurt?" she asked, her hands flitting about him but never landing, afraid of the reaction they might elicit should they make contact. She reached up and flushed the toilet once, not watching as the puke went down noisily, watching only how Blaine took a horribly shaky breath upon hearing her. "Your head? Is it your head?" A really bad migraine had the possibility of giving you an upset stomach and sometimes it made you sick, and from how he was grabbing his head - his _concussed_ head - that shouldn't be ruled out.

"N-N-" and then he threw up again, and Santana didn't hold her hands back this time, letting them rub circles into his chilled back, massaging him gently as he retreated, a breathless sob tearing from his lips.

"You're okay, you're okay," she whispered. "I'm going to stay here until you're okay. Shh, B, you're alright. You're okay."

"Head," he gasped for air, and then it came out again staggered, and he sucked more in.

"Okay, it's your head," she responded, letting him know she understood. "That's alright, we can deal with that. Please try not to hyperventilate, B. Slow, easy breaths. Don't overwork yourself. Take your time."

"Stomach," he added, and she was reminded of a six-year-old Blaine, though she'd never met him.

"Your stomach too?" she clarified, and when he nodded and scrunched his face up in pain she let her hands spread out widely and rub his shoulder blades. "That's okay, that's okay. Did you take your medication?" Maybe if he hadn't the pain in his head was just a side effect of the concussion and had nothing to do with his stomach. As it was, it still sounded like a really bad migraine, but she wasn't sure.

"Mm," he said, and she didn't know what the answer was, but a second later the muscles she'd been massaging convulsed under her palms because he was throwing up again.

"It's all going to be alright," she promised, and why the hell was she about to cry? Her throat wasn't so thick a second ago and her eyes weren't so warm. "It's all going to be alright. I'm right here, and you're okay."

"It's… felt…"

"You don't have to talk," she assured him, and it was a really good thing she was behind him because otherwise he'd have seen the tear that had fallen. "You don't have to talk until you're ready." She wanted to get rid of the tear, but she didn't dare take her hands off of him.

"Felt sick," he gasped out as soon as she'd finished speaking. "Woke up, felt sick… felt con- congested c-coming home."

"We can get through that easy," she said.

He laughed humorlessly. "Easily," he corrected.

Another tear fell. "Whatever, Gel Head."

"_Sweat_ Head."

"Do you enjoy correcting people so much that even when you're puking your guts out into your shared toilet with them you have to make sure their trying to comfort you is technically correct and accurate?" If she could make him feel better no other way, she'd do it like this.

He threw up again instead of answering her. "Shh," she said automatically. "Don't, don't. Don't breathe like that. In and out, with me. In…" she took a deep breath and he copied her, and she let go of him with one hand to lean up and flush the toilet again. "Out," she instructed, and showed him how, slowly and deliberately. "There we go, just like that. In… out…"

It took three and a half hours and both of them were exhausted to the point of not just passing out but being physically fatigued as well, and Santana managed to stay conscious long enough to make sure that Blaine was comfortable and safe cradled in her arms sleeping on the bathroom floor before she fell asleep herself.

* * *

Blaine remembered, vaguely, falling asleep surrounded by the warmth of Santana's hug. That definitely wasn't where he was now.

Santana's arms were gone, for one thing. For another, though he was warm, it was nothing like the body heat he'd been encased in before - he was covered snugly in a thick blanket that wasn't exactly soft, but wasn't scratchy. His whole head felt pressed in on itself, like it was going to cave in, and where he knew his stitches were there was a horrible throbbing that echoed around the cavern threatening to concave.

But Santana wasn't holding him and the cold bathroom tiles weren't under him and he didn't know where he was and he hurt and god damn it, "San?"

"Oh, good, you're awake," Santana's voice came from somewhere nearby, but his perception was so off he couldn't tell where. He struggled to find his eyelids and lift them, but there was a constant thrumming that took over his thoughts, and he couldn't focus hard enough to succeed at his task. "I was wondering what movie we might watch. What movies do you like? I really don't know, I've never had a reason to care before."

"San?"

When she spoke again, it was closer and it was different. "I'm next to you, Blaine. I'm right here."

He tried again to find his eyes. Something, anything that registered color. Talking seemed easy enough, where was his mouth? There, right there. He'd always been in good control of that. So if his mouth was there, his eyes were… _there_.

He lifted his eyelids tiredly. He still couldn't see properly; everything was swimming and wavy, as if he were hallucinating in the middle of a desert - but there was something black that seemed long coming from something tan that looked kind of round, so he assumed it was Santana, and she was right next to him as she'd said. "San?"

"You've called to me like three times now," she narrated. "Care to tell me why?"

"Are you there? Right there?" He still couldn't be sure. He didn't want to blink because he wasn't sure if he could lift his eyelids again, but his eyesight got worse the dryer his eyes got. He searched for his hand and when he found it he tried to wriggle it out of where it was beside his face towards her.

Her hand placed itself on top of hers and she could have been on fire for all the heat she passed to him. "Yes. Blink, B." Another flaming palm touched him, this time his forehead. "You're burning up."

What? No, she was the one who was overheated. "No, I'm cold."

"Oh." Santana sighed (he thought, or maybe she said something quietly he couldn't catch). "Alright, well, I'm pretty sure you're got stomach flu."

"What? From who?"

"Mr. Schue or Miss Pillsbury," Santana answered. "Remember what they said? Mr. Schue got sick last week."

"But Emma didn't…" he'd have furrowed his brow if he could have, but blinking took up enough energy.

"People who are around other people who are sick don't have to get sick to pass on the disease," Santana explained. "They're called carriers. They carry pathogens that give you the disease they managed to avoid."

"Oh." Blaine still didn't understand, but it sounded like something that made sense. "I'm cold."

"So you've said," Santana remarked, flipping her hand over on his forehead to press the back of it to him. "And on that we disagree. I'm going to give you a pain reliever for the headache and a fever reducer, okay?"

"Medicine?"

"Yes, medicine." He could almost _hear_ her rolling her eyes. "On top of the medicine for your concussion. That's three pills, Blaine, maybe four depending on how much pain reliever you need. Can you swallow them?"

"Don't…" _know_, he wanted to say, but it never got past the thick drainage that was clogging his throat.

"You need to, B," she told him. "I'll get you a glass of whatever you want to help wash it down. Water? Juice? Probably not wine, that might not be too good, but we've got sparkling cider Little Miss Vegan/Vegetarian/I-Don't-Even-Know-Anymore and her roomie Lady Man gave it to me when I moved out officially as a going-away gift."

He had to take medicine. Okay… okay. Okay. How strange, he wasn't accustomed to accepting help. But he needed it.

And in his half-asleep, half-sickness-affected mind, he finally figured out that if you need something, you deserve it, and he wasn't an exception simply because of a few mistakes more people than just him had made.

"Yes." He'd have nodded if he could have. "Yes, medicine. Good."

She snorted. "Okay, I know you're sick and injured and tired and stressed beyond what you should ever be, but you sound absolutely insanely like a toddler."

* * *

"Do you want soup?" Rachel asked him cheerfully, discarding her jacket behind her on the chair, scooting it back and standing up. The outside of the window was light and sunny, and none of them were outside enjoying the fantastic weather - but that didn't matter, because they were inside and scattered among the living room/kitchen and watching _Music Man_, blankets and pillows and mugs of hot chocolate or tea in their hands, small forts constructed and a heavily-medicated Blaine in the midst of the controlled chaos.

"If he's getting soup I'm making it," Kurt dictated.

"I don't know about the two of you but I've been making his soup for the past two weeks, I think I can handle it," Santana contributed.

"Does he even want soup?" Blaine teased them.

"Good point," Kurt awarded him absent-mindedly, "does he even want soup?"

"What kind of soup does he want?" Rachel asked. "I can make tomato soup. And grilled cheese!"

"You can't eat cheese, you're Vegan," Santana pointed out, and then asked, "Wait, are you? When I first met you you were, but then you said you were Vegetarian, and then you ate pizza with pepperoni and sausage on it, and then you gave me your chicken at lunch and said you were Vegetarian, and then you said you were Vegan again…"

"If our lives were a TV show, that would have no continuity and drive our viewers mad," Kurt commented.

"What would drive them mad is those jeans, Hummel," Santana argued. "And how they just cling to the curve of that ass."

"You're a _terrible_ lesbian," Kurt teased. "If you could have soup made out of my ass, you would, and you know it."

"I'm pretty sure Blaine's the one who wants that soup," Blaine said, the huge smile on his face and third-person sentence allowing them to semi-ignore him again.

"Nobody wants soup made out of your ass, Kurt," Rachel told him, "No matter how delicious it looks in those jeans."

"Mm," Blaine said, and bit the inside of his cheek to choke back the laugh that threatened to pass his chapped lips.

"See? Delicious," Santana said, sitting back. "Delicious soup. Which I will make for Mr. Sicky Gel Head over there."

"I'm making soup, I brought it up!" Rachel declared.

"I'm making soup, I'm his boyfriend." It was said with finality, but finality is hardly ever truly acknowledged in their group, and it's something they all love to hate about themselves.

"Boyfriend, Toyfriend, I'm his roommate, best friend, and sister, I'm making the damned soup."

"I don't think he ever asked for soup," Blaine mused.

"Yeah," Rachel nodded in his direction without actually being away of her actions, "Did he ever ask for soup?"

"No, you suggested it," Santana informed Rachel, who bit her lip and folded her hands together. "He didn't ask for it."

"Just hold on a second," Kurt snapped his fingers and his words, and leaned forward. "Since when have _you_ been his best friend?"

* * *

Kurt's voice carried from the kitchen, where he hustled about the stove, the soup he was making from scratch emanating a mouthwatering aroma that made Blaine's stomach rumble more than it already did from his illness. Satine, on the television screen, was looking at Christian, the reprise of their song bursting from the small speakers. "Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place…" And Kurt sang it so that he wasn't the star, so that he was just a mindless background to Satine, so Blaine wouldn't feel bad about his sore and clogged throat that prevented any really good song from coming through.

When he'd gotten the flu before at McKinley, it had just been a simply sinus-heavy flu, and it had mainly been his nose and head that had been affected, not his throat. He'd had to put twice his normal effort into his Diva Week performance, but he'd pulled it off. Now he couldn't even start singing without sounding like he was croaking.

It killed him a little, but he was still surrounded by music. Rachel, who was mixing batter for cookies next to Kurt, was humming along, and Santana was tapping her foot silently to the beat„ her eyes glued to the screen.

"San?" he spoke up, because the other two were busy.

"Mm?" she turned to him, her eyes leaving the screen immediately, going to him as if it were second nature to her.

"Cuddle with me?" he asked, spreading his arms wide and wiggling his feet a bit before the motion tired him out and he stopped both, letting them fall.

And though Santana did her trademark eye roll, she stood up and took the two steps to the couch, where she sank into the cushion right beside him and lifted the blanket over herself, too. They were around the same temperature now, but she felt slightly cold - because now Blaine could feel his own excess of heat, even if he still shivered. She put her arm around his shoulder as soon as their sides were pressed together, and he leaned into her as a response, his head resting just above her collarbone. Her hair fell over his and he was reminded that he hadn't gelled.

But he didn't care because he looks good anyways. He _was_ good anyways.

"I love you," he told her, because he loved her.

And her smile, so genuine and unexpected, stretching her cheeks and changing how the one resting on his head pressed against it, was welcomed like a monsoon in Death Valley. "I love you too."

"Santana, I will not have you stealing my boyfriend!" Kurt called over to them, and they all snickered.

* * *

"What do you want, Britt?" Santana answered her phone, holding it up to her ear and not bothering to pull away from Blaine. It killed her to be so harsh, but harshness was all she had for Brittany now that she could afford to show.

And then it disappeared because Brittany was crying. "I… I know we had a fight but I need to talk to you."

"Sweetie what's wrong?" she rushed without thinking about it. Blaine raised his head from her neck and looked at her worriedly, and Kurt, on his other side holding his hand, did the same. Rachel glanced over from the kitchen but went back to pulling the cookie trays out of the oven.

"I know you don't want to talk about Sam -"

"Did he hurt you?" she demanded. "I sear I'll -"

"No, I… well, yes, but it was me, too."

"What did the bastard do?" she growled. Brittany should not be crying.

"He said… he said what you did, except he said quieter and with no song and he didn't say he'd always love me the most -"

"He broke up with you?!" So this wasn't just a couple's spat she was calling her best friend to vent about. Santana's vision began tinting itself red.

"Because of the d-distance," Brittany sobbed. "Because I'm going to a dance school in Chicago and he's still in K-Kentucky -"

"You got in?" Santana asked, and then remembered that that wasn't the main issue. "Right, sorry. I'm proud of you, though."

"Tell me I'll get better?"

"You are better, honey," Santana promised, just as Blaine's phone rang. He fished it out of her pocket as she said, "You are better but you'll feel better in time, I swear." And then he looked at the caller ID and answered it.

"Hey, Sam."

* * *

A week went by.

Blaine was never once alone in the apartment, not even when it was clear his flu had passed.

It was a moment of sheer victory when Santana was leaving for work and paused before she was out the door to ask, "Are you okay?"

And he could answer with, "Yes. Yeah, I'm okay now."

* * *

"So are you sure you want to do this tonight?" Blaine asked him quietly, his voice muffled slightly by the pillow that cushioned his head as he laid sideways on the bed, facing Kurt, so he could see the curls escaping the loosened gel and the dancing lights in his eyes. "Make this choice?" He was happy, and content, and excited, but he'd been so respectful of Kurt's boundaries, boundaries he'd been careful not to cross for way too long, that Kurt ached to be able to hold him.

Wait a second - he _could_. Blaine was his boyfriend, that wasn't out of line.

He was about to stretch his arms out and rest them around Blaine, around his boyfriend, because despite his tentativeness that's what they are and have been for long enough to have driven their friends crazy with their denial of it, when he caught himself - _Blaine has boundaries too_, he reminds himself. Respect goes both ways. So he said, "That depends on whether or not we can do it tomorrow, too," and the words weren't picked out well but they got the message across. He wanted to be able to be intimate whenever possible, but he didn't know how long it would last - somehow it seemed like it'd be forever, but going day-by-day was the only thing that made sense. They couldn't measure time in eternities anymore - an eternity had been broken before it had been finished and they'd been left with shattered days in a row instead.

"I can promise you tomorrow," Blaine said, smiling slightly, but he could sense the same trepidation that buzzed around in his head catching in Blaine's.

"And after that?"

Blaine's smile faltered. "I can keep promising you tomorrows in our todays, but I can't promise you an eternity. Nobody can."

Ah, so they were on the same page.

But Kurt wanted this. And Blaine wanted this. So why couldn't they have it? Why couldn't they continue the conversation they'd just had, but speak their bodies and not their minds? Why the hell not? All eternities are made of are a beginning and a middle and never an end. It's what an eternity is: something that never ends. For whomever it was that would outlive the other, the eternity would end there; but for the other, the eternity would stretch on and on.

And Kurt realized that they had had an eternity before. And they were still in the same one. The breakup hadn't been the end. The eternity hadn't shattered. The days had simply become more individual, building blocks instead of a foundation. Sometimes they didn't fit and had to be placed elsewhere, or reshaped so they could be used when they needed to be, but all the days since the one where he'd first tapped him on the shoulder on that staircase at Dalton were part of an eternity they were still in. It hadn't ended. It would never end. Beyond death and fights and insecurities, it would never end - it would simply lull and stop counting. The days not happening anymore wouldn't change the fact that they did.

Their eternity would last forever because the time they spent knowing each other would always exist. And Kurt knew, looking at Blaine, that he'd finally reached that point faster than he had, which reminded him of their Dalton days, before their first kiss, when he had a crush on his best friend that was finally reciprocated. Blaine had been waiting for him to catch up for months, for years - and now that he had, he was racing ahead. Making up for lost time, though it would never truly be lost and would never not count.

So he said, "I can promise it. I can promise that if you keep giving me tomorrows, I can build an eternity. It won't be perfect, because that's really boring and no fun at all, and it will probably be fraught with faults and bad choices and a hell of a lot of mistakes; but it will be an eternity." Blaine looked confused, but open - honestly shy of the topic but not closed to it. "If you can promise me tomorrows forever, I can promise you forever tomorrow."

And Blaine caught up with him. Kurt sensed it in the way everything about him shifted. His body, first of all, on the bed, was suddenly closer, the sheets rustling under him as he clenched and spread out his muscles to scoot towards him further. And the sparkles in his eyes winked warmly at him, and the smile on his lips beckoned him to press his own against them. "I know we've tried before," Blaine whispered, his voice husky and low, "But I think you just wrote a rough draft of our wedding vows." Kurt knew the risk behind the statement and behind his grin, and goosebumps rose on his skin in reaction, his body responding to the thrill of it faster than his mouth.

"That's a tomorrow that we'll get to," Kurt said, and Blaine frowned. "But we should get married," he assured him. Anything to make the frown go away.

"Okay," Blaine said, and though Blaine had said that in response to him countless times, this time it was different. Different because he pulled away.

"What are you doing?" Kurt called out feebly. How had he driven him away? He'd spent all week working up to this, to having the courage to pursue this.

Blaine pulled open his drawer and plucked something out of it before sliding it closed again. And then he threw it casually and it landed in front of Kurt's stomach. As Blaine got back in the position he'd been in, this time actually smiling wider than he had been no matter how small it remained, Kurt's fingers brushed over the box and pulled it up in front of him. The velvet was smooth beneath his fingers and dark before his eyes.

"What is this?"

"I'm proposing," Blaine explained. "It's a ring."

And sure enough, when Kurt pushed the lid back, it gently opened, and there, sitting in the satin cushion, was a band of gold, thin but wide, set with one small onyx. Kurt stared at it, at the abnormal ring that was still the most beautiful gift he'd ever received besides Blaine himself. "You're… this is real?"

"Yes," Blaine responded, newly hesitant at Kurt's tone. "It's gold because I know you wear warm colors better and gold goes with warm colors and it's an onyx because I was thinking of 'Blackbird' when I bought it…"

"You bought this," Kurt repeated. "You bought this for me. To ask me to marry you."

"Well, yes," he said, trying to make a joke of it now, and Kurt looked up, because he hadn't meant to make Blaine so unsure he tried to pass it off as humor. "That is the general function of a ring like this."

"Yes," Kurt whispered.

"Yes?" The joke was gone. "What are you saying yes to?"

"The implied 'Will you marry me?'"

"Yes."

"Blaine!" But Kurt giggled then, high on exhilaration and adrenaline, his thoughts spinning even more than they had been. "Just help me put this on."

"Yes, sir," Blaine said, and Kurt's heart lurched at the playfulness. It was so easy. He didn't have to be as cautious as they both had been for too long. And then Blaine's fingers, warm and soft, took the box from his, and gently tugged the ring out. In the dim evening light pouring in the window it glistened and shone almost angelically, and when Blaine took his hand it was with the utmost care and tenderness, and then the ring was slipping onto his finger and Blaine set the box on the side table. The playfulness vanished and he was in total and complete awe as he met Kurt's eyes, and Kurt thought, _I did this to him. I made him this happy._

"So we'll get to it sooner than I thought," Kurt murmured. "And now we'll focus on the forever that will rise with the sun in a few hours."

Blaine caught his worse and his reply had a double meaning."So you _are_ sure?"

"Well, geez, it's not like I just got all philosophical and poetic just to have you question it. I'm offended."

"I love you, you know," Blaine told him, and Kurt felt a bit like a dam inside his chest broke and the sigh he let out let out _everything_ and the air that came in was full and clean again.

"And I love you," Kurt replied, saying the words as if they were the most obvious thing in the world, and then chuckled, "I also think this is the most adult conversation I've ever had."

"You're nineteen, pushing twenty, and this is the most adult conversation you've ever had?"

"Well you're nineteen and I dare you to beat it. It has to have greater factors for joy, fear, and future to qualify for competition."

"Mm," Is all Blaine says in response, and his eyes flicker between the pools of oceanic blue that mesmerize him so often and so much and the lips found below them that seem so ultimately soft and kissable. "Yeah, no, I can't think of anything."

"That's what I thought," Kurt smirked smugly.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Can I kiss you?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Um, yeah."

"Why do you think you need to ask my permission to kiss me?"

Blaine's eyebrows furrowed. "Because making a romantic advance when it's non-consensual is not only extremely wrong but way too creepy for me to ever consider actually doing?"

"Oh, so you're being appropriate."

"Yeah."

"Well then." Kurt raised his eyebrows and his smirk grew more profound. "I guess my hopes of inappropriateness are dashed."

And Blaine's triangular eyebrows quirk up adorably, though his entire demeanor changes. "Inappropriateness?"

"Indeed," Kurt murmurs. "You see, I had hopes and even a half-formulated plan that involved a rather excessive amount of tongue usage. And not all of it concerned mouths."

* * *

"God I've missed you like - _Jesus Christ, Blaine_ - this so much," Kurt breathed under Blaine as he slid into him again. Kurt's heart was racing and pounding so harshly that he felt it would rocket out of his chest, where he was sure Blaine could already hear it throbbing the way he could hear Blaine's thrumming like a hummingbird's wings. Blaine didn't seem capable of forming comprehensible words, but the moan he released was so low and guttural that Kurt's breath caught in his throat and accelerated his pulse faster.

Kurt threw his head back, his eyes half-open, half-closed, wanting desperately to look at Blaine full-on but knowing if he did that he would be gone entirely, to the point of no return. Kurt felt Blaine's hands on his hips, tugging him closer as he thrust, and Kurt returned the favor in a scramble of fingers, clawing down Blaine's back until he scratched just below his waist and pulled him impossibly nearer. Blaine pushed forward again, but so quickly and with so much force that Kurt let a whimper fly past his lips, begging for more -

And Blaine was gone, coming hard and fast inside him, and Kurt felt the heat of the feeling flicker through his bones and blood when he arched his back and cried out, Blaine's hips stuttering with his incoherent words.

"Finish me," Kurt heard his voice plead but couldn't recall speaking, his mind and all inside it blurred and hot. "Finish me, please, Blaine, please - _o-oh_," and he finished with another whimper, which he knew drove Blaine mad.

Blaine's hips slowed then, but he didn't stop entirely - he ground his hips against Kurt's and rolled his body over his so Kurt felt a new part of it feel a flash of Blaine's body heat before it moved downward in a wave, which only succeeded in adding to the intense heat and pain that emanated from Kurt's pulsing dick. Kurt dug his nails into Blaine to control his movements and found that when Blaine fought against that and went slower still that the sense of control and yet lack of it was enticing, and he groaned loudly, closing his eyes all the way so he could no longer see how the dim light cast traipsing shadows across his cheeks.

And then Blaine let go of his hips entirely and put on hand on his shoulder, parallel to his mouth, which he put on Kurt's neck, right behind his ear and at the top edge of his clear jawline. He began to suck on the spot, dragging the skin between his teeth, as he pumped his hand up and down Kurt's cock.

"Come for me," Blaine panted against his skin, his breath washing over his neck in between soft kisses and tongued bites, "Come for this, for me, _Kurt_."

It took two more strokes of Blaine's hand and Kurt was gone with him, shuddering and convulsing as the individual bits of him screamed with torturous pleasure, wracking his frame with ultimate joy; a whine passed into the air around them and Kurt couldn't tell which one of them it belonged to. Blaine loosened his grip on Kurt's length and slipped tenderly out of Kurt's battered opening before collapsing on top of him and just lying there, his breathing labored, both of them choking on staccato intakes of air they felt deprived of.

And then Blaine was laughing through his gasps and rocking himself over top of Kurt, and Kurt laughed with him, though he didn't know what they were laughing at - maybe they were laughing because it felt so good to do so.

Blaine's low giggle just barely made the words possible to make out: "You do realize that's the first time I've topped, right?"

And Kurt laughed twice as hard and Blaine joined him and they were both fairly certain that if the neighbors hadn't heard them before they _certainly_ heard them then.

**The End**


End file.
